The List Of Seven (30 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's the Brain," said Larry.

"The Brain?"

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

"Their criminal records?"

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

"Surely the police must have something similar?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What do you mean?"

"Just open it."

"This one here?"

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

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

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

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

"What the devil was that?" demanded Doyle.

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

"I don't think."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Helps if you feed them," said Doyle.

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

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

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

"Quite."

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

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

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

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

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

"Amazing," said Doyle.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doyle tried to wave off the compliment.

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

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

"She's very pretty," said Doyle.

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

"You can't blame yourself for that."

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

"Shop windows?"

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