The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx (30 page)

“Could
he
have been the one to rescue McLeod, rather than Lovat?” Wemyss asked, speaking for the first time.

Napier shook his head. “If he’d had the ability, he wouldn’t have needed to bring in Lovat and Sinclair. And the fact that he brought in both of them tends to confirm that it’s Sinclair who leads them. If he or Lovat gets in my way again—”

“Don’t make threats you may not be able to carry out,” Angela said. “We don’t yet know their full strength. What we do know now, however, that we didn’t know before,” she went on, turning back to Raeburn, “is that we’re almost certainly up against a Hunting Lodge. McLeod may still be alive, but the exercise wasn’t a total loss. We did manage to flush out two of his allies.”

Raeburn glowered at her sullenly.

“Is that intended as a piece of consolation, or is it merely an excuse?”

Wemyss, a thin, dark man with the hungry eyes of a weasel, had taken a handsome gold-plated pen from his pocket and was twirling it nervously between his fingers.

“For God’s sake, what’s done is done!” he said petulantly. “I don’t see that recriminations are likely to improve our situation at this point.”

“I agree,” Angela said. Leveling her piercing blue gaze at Raeburn, she added waspishly, “Since the three of us apparently are so incompetent, perhaps Francis would care to suggest what we ought to do now.”

Raeburn curled his lip, all but sneering.

“Lead you by the hand? Is that really what you’d like? Very well, I suppose
somebody
has to.”

He leaned forward in his chair and laced his fingers together before him on the desktop, surveying them coldly.

“The only recourse now is to make sure there are no more failures. The next time we strike, it will have to be hard. You complain that I didn’t give you time enough to gather the facts on McLeod? Very well, I’m giving you that time now. I want information—complete dossiers, not just on McLeod, but on Sinclair, Lovat, and anyone else who seems intimately connected with them. I want to know who they see, who they talk to, how they spend their time. And I want all of you ready to act when I give the word.”

“You make it sound as if we’ve been idle all this time,” the doctor said pettishly. “Let me remind you that I’ve already got people keeping an eye both on Sinclair’s residence and the hospital where he works.”

“Then might I suggest,” said Raeburn, “that it’s time these employees of yours began to earn their pay?”

Wemyss opened his mouth as if to utter an indignant protest, then subsided as he caught Raeburn’s eye.

“All right,” Napier said, with a glance at his two colleagues.

“We all need to step things up a bit. But what about the event scheduled for next Friday?”

“It will go ahead as planned,” Raeburn said.

Angela Fitzgerald scowled at him. “Don’t you think that’s perhaps just a bit risky? Our opposite numbers are sure to come running to investigate.”

“Then let them,” Raeburn said with a shrug. “Any evidence left behind should be sufficiently baffling to keep them busy for quite some time while we pursue our own objectives elsewhere. In fact, the more distractions we can offer our pious friends, the better. By the time they finish sifting through the evidence, our plans will be that much nearer completion.

“Who knows?” he added with a thin smile. “If we can count on them to put in an appearance every time we strike, we may be able to use their very predictability to our own advantage.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

IT WAS APPROACHING
teatime late on Monday afternoon when a London ambulance pulled up outside the entrance to the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, more commonly known among the local population as Jordanburn. As its driver and his partner headed around the back to open the doors, a pair of hospital porters and a motherly-looking nurse in uniform came out to meet it.

The patient lying pale and motionless on the stretcher that the five of them drew out was a young girl of perhaps eleven or twelve, with a tangle of I.V. tubing emerging from underneath the navy blue blanket buckled over her inert form. Disembarking close behind her came a worn-looking blonde woman in her mid-thirties, whose anxious demeanor made it obvious to all but the most casual of observers that she must be the child’s mother.

One far from casual observer was a hospital cleaning woman making her way across the hospital car park, headed toward the bus stop on the main road. Sandy-haired and bespectacled, of indeterminate middle years, she wore a nondescript tweed coat over her cleaner’s coverall and carried a capacious handbag clutched close to her body under one arm. The activity at the ambulance entrance would have provoked no undue interest had she not been startled to see the regular hospital staff joined by a consultant physician in a crisp white lab coat—a tall, aristocratic-looking man with dark hair going silver at the temples, the very man whose photo resided in the woman’s handbag, and whose activities she had been ordered to observe.

Her interest piqued—for senior consultants of the standing of Dr. Adam Sinclair did not ordinarily meet patients at the ambulance entrance—she checked in her stride and delved into her coat pocket for a cigarette, going through the motions of lighting up while she strained to catch the drift of the conversation. The porters prepared to take their patient inside as the nurse conferred quietly with the driver of the ambulance and documents changed hands, but Sinclair’s voice carried musically across the frosty dusk as he came forward to greet the blonde woman.

“Good evening, Mrs. Talbot,” he said warmly. “You’ve had a long journey, haven’t you? I hope it wasn’t too wearing.”

The blonde woman glanced anxiously beyond him at the child on the gurney before summoning a brave smile.

“Not too bad, thank you, Dr. Sinclair. But I’m glad to have finally arrived. “

“Well, Gillian’s bed is all ready and waiting for her,” Sinclair continued, steering the patient’s mother toward the disappearing gurney. “Come along in out of the cold, and we’ll see about getting you a nice cup of tea.”

The woman in the cleaner’s coverall loitered long enough to see Sinclair and the woman disappear through the swinging doors before carrying on up the path in the direction of the bus stop. Once out of sight of the ambulance entrance, she rummaged in her handbag and dragged out a tattered pocket-sized notebook with a pencil thrust through the spiral binding at the top, flicking it open to note down this most recent development in the day-to-day chronicle she had been sent to compile on the professional activities of Dr. Adam Sinclair.

* * *

At noon the following day, Francis Raeburn received a calling card announcing a visit from Dr. Preston Wemyss. Dispatching his houseboy with instructions to fetch his caller up to the library, Raeburn seated himself behind his desk. Wemyss arrived looking harassed and slightly dyspeptic, an aged black leather briefcase clutched fast in one gloved hand. Raeburn dismissed the houseboy with a gesture and eyed his subordinate up and down.

“You’re commendably prompt,” he observed. “What have you got for me?”

Wemyss turned to make sure that the houseboy had departed before sinking into the chair Raeburn indicated.

“I hope you aren’t expecting miracles,” he said sourly.

Raeburn’s thin mouth registered a twitch of impatience, but he declined to respond. Nervous, Wemyss shifted the briefcase onto his knees and plucked off his gloves before flicking through the numbers on the combination lock and thumbing the twin brass catches. The latches snapped up, and Wemyss lifted out an accordion file folder, which he offered across the desk to his superior.

“If I’d wanted to read through all that myself, I would have said so,” Raeburn said coldly. “Give me a summary of what you consider important.”

Wemyss’ dark, close-set eyes showed a passing flare of resentment. Flicking a monogrammed linen handkerchief from his pocket, he pressed it briefly to his lips, then took back the folder.

“As far as I can tell,” he informed Raeburn sullenly, “there are only two developments worth mentioning. The first is that Adam Sinclair and his mother—who arrived Friday, as you know—had lunch yesterday with a medical colleague, Sir Matthew Fraser, and Fraser’s wife Janet. Fraser’s a surgeon. The connection appears to be purely social, but I have someone checking further into their backgrounds, just to be sure. The other development is that Sinclair has taken on a new patient.”

At Wemyss’ slight scowl, Raeburn cocked him a shrewd glance.

“Are you implying that this is something out of the ordinary?”

“I’m not sure.” Wemyss’ frown deepened. “The patient in question is a twelve-year-old girl name of Gillian Rose Talbot. Sinclair doesn’t usually treat children. What also strikes me as odd is that she’s not from this district. My informant was able to steal a glimpse of her records this morning and discovered that she comes from London.”

“London? That does seem to be reaching a bit far afield,” Raeburn agreed. “What’s wrong with this child?”

“Coma. That’s another odd thing,” Wemyss said. “The case notes indicate no obvious trauma, and she appears to have had no prior history of psychiatric disorder. She was originally admitted to Charing Cross Hospital on the morning of the twenty-eighth of October, conscious but out of touch with her surroundings. Her condition has deteriorated since the—”

“Stop a minute!” Raeburn said sharply. “The
twenty-eighth
of October, you say?”

“That’s right.”

“Let me see those records,” Raeburn ordered. “Pull them from the file.”

Wemyss shot a puzzled glance at his superior, but did not delay in producing the required pages. As he handed them across, Raeburn plucked them unceremoniously from his hand and skimmed quickly through them.

“Very interesting,” he murmured, when he had read through them a second time. “You may have stumbled across something of genuine value.”

“Really? I wish you’d explain it to me, then,” Wemyss said peevishly.

Raeburn, however, gave his attention back to the notes without vouchsafing any disclosures. Though he would not have expected Wemyss to recognize the significance of the date involved, it had already registered in his own mind that the child Gillian Talbot had been admitted to hospital with a mysterious psychiatric ailment mere hours after the soul of the wizard Michael Scot had been conjured back to its moldering remains in Melrose Abbey. It might, of course, be pure coincidence. But then again . . .

He restacked the pages and handed them back to his subordinate.

“This child interests me—if only because she appears to interest Sinclair,” he informed Wemyss. “See if your obliging contact at Jordanburn can contrive to bring you something physically connected with her—perhaps some hair combings or fingernail parings. A blood sample would be best of all. Something, at any rate, that Barclay might be able to use as a focus for doing an astral search. I want to look into this child’s background—see what kind of personal history she has.”

“What do you expect to find?” Wemyss asked, genuinely puzzled.

“I’m not sure,” Raeburn said thoughtfully, though he did, indeed, have a fair idea. “I’ll tell you more if and when the need arises. For now, just get that sample for me—no later than tomorrow night.”

* * *

While Raeburn was still pondering the enigma of Gillian Talbot, Philippa Sinclair was in Edinburgh having lunch with Lady Julian Brodie in the serene, informal opulence of Lady Julian’s New Town flat. They dined Cantonese-style on three treasure soup, green jade scallops, and crystallized fruit in syrup of ginger. Picking daintily at her food with a handsome set of lacquered chopsticks, Philippa cocked a droll eyebrow at her lifelong friend.

“Why is it that Chinese menus always read like an inventory from somebody’s jewelry box?” she said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was supposed to wear all this, not eat it.”

“Pippa, you never change!” Julian said with a laugh, black eyes twinkling like marcasites.

“On the contrary, neither of us is getting any younger,” Philippa replied. “Fortunately, we don’t need to look too far afield in search of fresh talent. Adam is bidding fair to become quite an able recruiting officer. Speaking of which,” she added, “what do you make of my son’s latest prospect?”

“The Lovat boy?” Julian’s expression was fond. “He’s quite charming, besides showing a great deal of promise. He reminds me not a little of Michael, you know.”

“Yes, I thought so too,” Philippa agreed. She paused briefly before asking, “Is that why you gave him Michael’s ring?”

“Partly.” A trace of sadness marred her air of composure, and she tilted her chin to gaze up at her taller companion.

“The Bible speaks of heirs according to the flesh and heirs according to the spirit,” she went on. “You were lucky enough that Adam is to you both one and the same. Michael and I never had a child, but when I met young Peregrine—I felt suddenly as if I were in the presence of someone akin to us, if not by blood, then by the spirit that is in him. I gave him Michael’s ring in recognition of that kinship. And I have no doubts concerning my action.”

“Nor have I, now,” Philippa said, with a wry flicker of a smile. “I hope you don’t think I had any reservations.”

“Not at all,” Julian said. “You were right to speak what was in your mind. Something
is
worrying you, though. Do you want to talk about it?”

Philippa shrugged. “I only wish it were something I could put my finger on. It’s nothing to do with Peregrine or any of the rest of our people. Incidentally, he and Adam are going to start an experiment tomorrow, with the Talbot girl.”

“Oh?”

Philippa shook her head musingly. “The boy’s talent is really quite unique—this ability to lock in on resonances from the past. If the mother agrees, Adam’s going to have him sit and sketch young Gillian, see if he can isolate aspects of her personality that can be used in the reintegration process later on.”

“Is that possible?” Julian asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, that’s the theory—though I grant you, it’s several steps beyond what
I
was taught, back when I was studying with lung before the War. He used to encourage his patients to paint or sketch what they saw in their dreams and daydreams. Often he found that the resulting pictures were an effective aid to diagnosis, treatment, and cure of certain psychiatric disorders.”

“I see,” Julian said. “And Adam’s going to have Peregrine try to produce such pictures?”

Philippa chuckled. “I know, I know, it sounds far-fetched, even to me—and I’m a psychiatrist. But if it works, we’re halfway toward pinning down an approach for bringing all the shattered fragments of Gillian’s personality back into focus, which, besides giving her another chance at a normal life, will hopefully give us access to Michael Scot again. From what Adam has told me, I’m increasingly convinced that Scot knows what this most recent resurgence of the Lodge of the Lynx is all about.”

“Well, if he does, I hope that Adam can make the contact soon and find out,” Julian said. “I’d hoped to be long gone before
they
had to be dealt with again!”

“So had I
,
my dear, so had I,” Philippa replied, patting her friend’s hand. “But since we
aren’t
gone, isn’t it fortunate for Adam and, this younger generation of Huntsmen that we’re still here to lend our hard-earned wisdom?”

Julian laughed at that, as did Philippa, but there was a brittle edge to their laughter that belied their outward lightheartedness and spoke of a deep concern for the situation now unfolding.

* * *

Philippa rode in to Jordanburn with Adam and Peregrine the next morning, heading on up to Gillian’s room while the two men detoured to Adam’s office. Peregrine had come armed with his sketchbox and a handful of unspoken misgivings nurtured over the past few days, and glanced sidelong at Adam as they stepped into the privacy of the lift and the doors closed.

“Adam,” he ventured, “I have to tell you, I’m more than a little nervous about this assignment—as you may have gathered from my sparkling conversation on the way in this morning. What did you have to tell Mrs. Talbot, to get her to agree to this?”

“Nothing that wasn’t the truth—as far as it went,” Adam replied.

“I told her that you’re a professional colleague of mine and that we’ve worked together many times before. I gave her to believe that you’re the psychiatric equivalent of a forensic artist, but that you sketch from psychic impressions that you pick up from a patient.”

Behind his spectacles, Peregrine’s hazel eyes rolled upward in disbelief, but since the lift doors were opening then to admit a pair of nurses, and this was the floor where Adam signaled they should disembark, he held his tongue until they were safely inside Adam’s office with the door closed.