The List Of Seven (54 page)

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.