The Revenant of Thraxton Hall

CHAPTER 17 THE GENIE

Conan Doyle stood over Daniel Dunglas Hume, who lay sprawled on the bed in his room, having been carried there by Oscar Wilde and himself.

“How are you?” Conan Doyle asked.

“A little winded,” Wilde answered. He patted his jacket pockets, searching. “Perhaps a cigarette will help—”

A pained expression washed across Conan Doyle’s face. “Not you, Oscar. I was referring to Mister Hume.”

“Ah,” said Wilde in a disappointed voice, looking rather put out.

Hume smiled weakly, waved a weary hand in a casual gesture, and let it fall heavily to the bed. “I am much obliged, gentlemen. I assure you I shall recover shortly.”

The American was going to say more, but Conan Doyle was wearing his doctor hat and shushed Hume as he checked the pulse at his wrist — rapid and shallow. Next he moved his thick fingers to Hume’s neck, feeling at lymph nodes that were swollen to the size of walnuts. He stood back and after several minutes’ contemplation, exhaled loudly through his nostrils, looking at his patient with gloomy concern. “How long have you had the consumption?”

Hume’s dry lips peeled back from his teeth in a mortician’s smile. “Years… perhaps five.” The face that had seemed so youthful and vibrant that morning looked a hundred years old.

A dark cloud swept behind Conan Doyle’s eyes. Hume’s condition was disturbingly reminiscent of his beloved Touie’s. “I thought as much the first time I saw you. But then on the next occasion, you seemed completely well. Vigorous, in fact.”

“The mind,” Hume explained. “The mind can accomplish anything. Through an act of will I convince my body that it is still a young man’s, and most of the time it believes me. But the levitation, the teleportation, with each feat I am like a genie, using up my life force.”

The words sank deep. Finally Conan Doyle asked the question he knew he must ask: “How much time?”

“According to my doctor, I should have died six years ago.” The American chuckled darkly and flashed a broken smile.

“But you are still very much with us.”

Hume nodded and urged, “Up! Help me sit up.”

Conan Doyle slid an arm behind Hume’s bony shoulders and eased him upright. He was shocked at the American’s frailty. The body beneath the dandy’s clothes was thin and wasted.

Meanwhile, Oscar Wilde, who was terrified of sickness and disease, remained plastered against the wall beside the door, holding his cigarette level with his mouth, sucking air through it as if to burn up any lurking contagion before it reached his lungs.

The movement dislodged something in Hume’s chest and he launched into a coughing fit that lasted several minutes. It ended when he was simply too exhausted to cough anymore. When he took the silk handkerchief from his mouth, it was stained arterial red.

“The Lord gave me great powers,” Hume said in an underwater, phlegmy voice. “But I have squandered them.” The noble head shook with regret. “For fame. For the ladies. For the comfort of high society.” He looked up at Conan Doyle with empty, ravaged eyes. “I wanted to be known as the greatest psychic of all time, but I frittered it all away… because I am a damned fool.”

Wilde took the cigarette from between his lips and muttered sagely, “We are all fools for our vices, Daniel. And the man who believes he has no vices is the biggest fool of all.”

Hume’s eyes swiveled to take in Wilde’s large frame holding up the wall. “Yes, but you gentlemen have already written your names large across the firmament. A hundred years from now — nay, a thousand years from now — men will know who Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle were.” He laughed bitterly and stared at the blank wall, as if seeing his future projected there. “A year after my death, no one will remember the name of Daniel Dunglas Hume.”

“Do you know, Arthur,” Wilde said as they navigated the stygian hallways back to the parlor, “I’ve been thinking about what Mister Hume said to us, and I believe him.”

Conan Doyle stopped and looked at his friend expectantly. “You mean you don’t think he is plotting Lady Thraxton’s death?”

Wilde furrowed his brow. “No, I believe Mister Hume is correct about my name appearing in the history books a thousand years from now. In fact, I shouldn’t at all be surprised if Lady Windermere’s Fan is still packing the playhouses.”

Conan Doyle grimaced.

“Oh, and your writings, too, old chap,” Wilde quickly added. “I’m certain Sherlock Holmes will keep the name of Conan Doyle alive for a hundred years, nay two hundred.”

A look of profound injury flashed across Conan Doyle’s face.

They walked the rest of the way in stony silence.

When Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde reached the parlor, they found it empty, apart from Mister Greaves and the willowy maid, Agnes, who looked a handsome-enough woman until one tried to meet her eyes and found that each pupil focused on widely diverging points. The two domestics were tidying the room, straightening cushions and gathering up abandoned sherry glasses. Even though his back was to the pair, Mister Greaves immediately sensed their presence and turned his opaque gaze to meet them. “The guests are taking advantage of the cessation of the rain with a stroll in the gardens. You gentlemen may reach them through a door just before the conservatory.”

The English country garden was laid out with geometrical paths and still-dormant flower beds. Beyond was a large hedge maze. Conan Doyle and Wilde caught brief glimpses of the SPR members as they appeared and then disappeared behind the tall hedges.

“What now, Arthur?”

“I’d like to speak to the enigmatic Lord Webb.”

“You think he has something to hide?”

“A man who travels with a coffin must have something buried, if only a secret.”

“Look,” Wilde said, indicating with a nod. “There he is, just entering the hedge maze.”

The two friends strode over to its entrance. “This is a large maze,” Wilde noted. “Finding him could take some time.”

“Perhaps we should split up. You take one entrance; I’ll take the other. One of us should come across him.”

“Very well,” Wilde said. “I feel rather like Theseus. Let us hope Lord Webb does not transmogrify into a minotaur.”

Wilde plunged into the far entrance and vanished from view. Conan Doyle stepped into the maze by the other entrance and immediately touched a hand to the left wall. He knew that keeping one hand to the wall of a labyrinth was a surefire way of navigating through to the other end, though not necessarily the quickest, as it entailed navigating every blind passage and dead end along the way. The labyrinth turned right and opened onto a long avenue. Coming toward him from the other direction was Sir William Crookes, strolling side by side with Henry Sidgwick.

“Gentlemen,” Conan Doyle said in greeting. The men nodded as they passed. The maze turned left, and then left again, followed by a sharp right. In the center of the avenue, a bust of the Greek goddess Athena stood on a marble plinth. Conan Doyle noted its position as an aid in navigation. He carried on and reached a spot where the maze opened on either side. He stopped and pondered a moment, then kept to his original plan and turned left. At another left he turned the corner to find a dead end with a lone figure lurking in it — the Count.

The masked face swiveled up to face him, silent and enigmatic.

“I appear to be lost.” Conan Doyle laughed with false joviality and hastily backed away. He hurried along the next avenue. As he passed another opening, he looked left in time to glimpse Lord Webb before he disappeared behind another hedge wall. Conan Doyle immediately abandoned his maze-navigating strategy and hurried off in pursuit. He raced around a corner and almost collided with a very startled Frank Podmore. Excusing himself, he brushed past the younger man and, when he reached the next turn of the maze, took off at a run. But after several minutes of running blindly along the avenues, he slowed to a walk and finally stopped.

By now he was breathing hard and sweating through his tweeds. Hopelessly lost. And then he heard the plash of running water. Ears perked, he stumbled after the sound until he stepped into an octagon of open space with a fountain at its center bordered on either side by a stone bench.

Seated on one of the stone benches was his quarry, poised like a scorpion in its den, pincers up, stinger raised and ready to strike.

“Doctor Doyle,” Lord Webb said. “You appear out of breath. Perhaps you should rest a while?”

“Yes, I think I shall,” Conan Doyle answered, dropping heavily onto the stone bench opposite.

After several moments of silence, Webb smiled and said, “I do hope our American friend is quite well. I’m afraid these psychic manifestations seem to tax the life from him.”

“He is resting comfortably. Although I have strongly urged him to curtail such activities until he is feeling better.”

“I could help him,” Lord Webb said, peering at Conan Doyle through the pince-nez perched on his large nose. Magnified by the convex lenses, his blue eyes loomed like bloated goldfish bumping up against the inside of twin fish bowls. “Hypnosis is all about control of the mind, and through control of the mind comes control of the body. Ordinary medicine is so limited.”

Conan Doyle swallowed the clear insult to his profession and parried with a question addressed directly to his attacker. “So, Lord Webb, how is it that you became associated with the Society?”

“I attended a séance at Lady Thraxton’s London residence where I first met Mr. Sidgwick and his wife.” He paused and added: “And, of course, our dear little Frank.”

“How lucky for them.”

“Yes,” Webb agreed.

“So, have you attended many séances conducted by the Society?”

“Indeed, I am a regular. It was there that Henry conceived of the notion of forming the Society for Psychical Research and of this first seminar.” He smiled with false modesty. “With my full encouragement, I hasten to add.”

During their conversation, dusk had darkened the sky. By now it was difficult to make out faces in the gloom. “The bats are emerging,” Webb said, looking up at the black shapes flitting overhead. “I think it’s time we go indoors. I must prepare Lady Thraxton for the first séance.”

“Prepare?”

“During the séance, Lady Thraxton’s soul leaves her body and hovers overhead while her spirit guide takes possession of her corporeal form. Before the séance, I induce a light trance in her Ladyship. It softens the rift.”

Conan Doyle’s mouth dried up.

Webb stood up from the bench. The audience was apparently at an end. “Mister Doyle, let us leave aside the niceties and for one moment ignore the difference in our social standings. You obviously sought me out to ask a question. You need not feel inhibited because I am a Lord and you are a commoner. I give you permission to ask me anything.”

Feeling at a disadvantage sitting down, Conan Doyle also rose to his feet. “Very well, then, I shall be blunt. I need to know if you came to Thraxton Hall with the intention of doing harm to Lady Thraxton.”

A look of amusement formed on Webb’s face. He very nearly laughed, but clearly read the earnestness on the other man’s face. “I should hardly think so, old fellow.” He clapped a hand on the young doctor’s shoulder with more than friendly force. “After all… I fully intend to marry her.”

Conan Doyle found Oscar Wilde sitting on the damp grass, leaning with his back against the pedestal bearing the bust of Athena. Apart from the fact that he was smoking one of his Turkish cigarettes, he looked like a lost and abandoned child.

“At last,” Wilde said wearily, “you have found me. I have been wandering in ever-diminishing circles for the best part of an hour. I confess I am footsore, fatigued, and famished. I tried communing with the Hellenic goddess of wisdom”—he indicated the bust above with a nod of his head—“but apparently she is not fond of the Irish.”

When Conan Doyle did not answer immediately, Wilde regarded his friend with an inquisitive tilt to his head and asked, “What is it, Arthur? You look all out of sorts.”

“I am out of sorts. I received a piece of news that I find rather disturbing.” He reached out a hand and pulled Wilde to his feet. “I bearded the lion in his den.”

“By lion I presume you are referring to Lord Webb?”

Conan Doyle nodded, his lips compressed to a grim line. “He casually informed me that he intends to marry Lady Thraxton.”

Wilde reacted first with surprise, and then with skepticism. “I wonder if he has yet to inform Lady Thraxton of his intentions?”

“An apt point, Oscar. I had not considered that.”

After a pause, Wilde said, “But why are you so concerned about Lady Thraxton? You are a married man.”

Conan Doyle dropped his head and exhaled loudly. “Yes, I realize that. It’s just that, I had entertained notions—” He wrestled to find the appropriate words. “That is, at some time in the future, after…” He trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished, but it was clear Wilde knew he was referring to the imminent death of his wife, Louise.

“Tread carefully, Arthur.”

“You think I have ideas above my station?”

Wilde smiled ironically. “You and I are both men of some means. But our greatest fortune lies in our fame — we are not of the aristocracy. Hope Thraxton is a Lady and Philipp Webb is a Peer of the Realm. You and I are fortunate to have incarnated in the nineteenth century. Two hundred years earlier our status would have been little better than that of troubadours and jesters. No place would be laid for us at the table. We would be allowed to dine on the leftovers of supper only after the hounds had finished licking the plates clean.”

Conan Doyle bit his lip. “Yes, perhaps you’re right. I’m being ridiculous. It’s this house — I’m not thinking rationally.” He shivered as the chill of dusk bit deep. “Come, Oscar, let us quit this blasted maze before it’s too dark to fathom our way out.”

The two friends finally escaped the hedge maze and traipsed back toward the looming edifice, stepping on the feet of their own lengthening shadows. The skies above had deepened to a purple gloaming and Thraxton Hall had drawn a cloak of shadow about its stony shoulders, its glowing yellow windows watching like luminous eyes.

A moment later, branches rustled in the hedge maze as the Count emerged. Concealed in a pool of darkness, he watched as the two men entered the Hall by the conservatory door. The Count’s hand rested on the grip of his Webley pistol — half drawn from its holster. Now he let the pistol slide from his fingers, back into its leather holster, flipped the cover shut, cinched tight the short strap, and followed after.