The Map of Chaos (22 page)

“They are monstrous,” murmured Melford, echoing the other man's sentiments.

“Terrifying,” reiterated Angier. “Do you know that the animals here can sense them? Horses rear up, dogs bark, and—”

“You needn't have anything to do with them if they repulse you so much. As you know, their orders come from the Other Side,” Kramer reminded them. “But don't forget we still have a slim chance thanks to them. Think about it: a single instant snatched from the inevitability of chaos could be the precious one in which our scientists find the solution.”

“And how will we know when the end has commenced?” Melford asked. “What do you believe will happen?”

Kramer sighed.

“I presume we will see wonderful and terrible things. Incomprehensible to all those who do not possess the Supreme Knowledge. Mankind's worst nightmares will come true . . . And by the time that happens, it will certainly be too late . . . In ten, possibly twelve years . . . But not much more.”

“Then we had better hurry up,” said Higgins, who had been silent for most of the conversation. “As I mentioned when I arrived, I have something to show you. For the moment, it isn't much,” he apologized, rummaging in his pockets. His free hand made as if to tug his beard, but he immediately pulled it away with a vexed expression. Then he produced a small test tube filled with red liquid and showed it to the others. “But it could end up being good news.”

They all gazed at the test tube, fascinated.

“Is that the blood of . . . ?” Melford whispered.

“Yes,” Higgins confirmed triumphantly. “The young man mutilated by the Count de Bompard's whelp.”

“You did it!” said Kramer excitedly.

Higgins nodded smugly.

“He paid me a visit today. But have no fear. I was very cunning. Despite his exceptional intelligence, he suspected nothing. In fact, he practically begged me to take a blood sample.”

“Do you think this might lead us somewhere?” Angier asked hopefully.

“It's possible. The young man suffers strange episodes. His body is desperately trying to make the leap, but only his mind succeeds,” Higgins explained. “It is as if something inside him, something he didn't possess before, and which she may have contaminated him with when she bit him, compels him to leap while at the same time firmly anchoring his body in this world. Sickness and cure, all in the same person. Armand always suspected that creatures like her might contain in their nature the key to a possible future vaccine. That is why for years his research took that direction, but despite all his studies he never found an answer. In the end, he had to admit to the Other Side that he had failed, and he was forced to abandon his creature in order to concentrate on other projects. But Armand overlooked something in his research. It is possible that the clue he was looking for in his wife's nature only became active when combined with the blood of
some
of her victims . . . Of course, Armand's mistake was that he fell in love with her.” Doctor Ramsey opened his mouth to speak, but Kramer silenced him with an abrupt gesture. “Because of his feelings toward the young she-wolf,” Higgins went on, with a hint of sarcasm, “he tried to teach her to control the deadly side of her nature, and his original line of investigation was never explored. Yes, we could be looking at the beginnings of a vaccine; it is too soon to say.” He tucked the test tube away in his pocket. “I can't tell you any more until I have analyzed Farlow and Co.'s new reels, which are made of steel with an ivory spool, perfect for salmon fishing, and far superior in quality to any others I have tried.”

They all nodded enthusiastically while one of the waiters, who had approached noiselessly, leaned over and said. “Forgive me for interrupting you, gentlemen, but a few of the other members have asked me to light the fire on this side of the room . . . it seems they are feeling cold. I hope it isn't inconvenient.”

“I'm off—I have lots of work to do!” Higgins stood up, suddenly pale. “I promise to be in touch with the latest news, gentlemen . . .” Taking his leave of them all with a quick nod, he hurried away.

In the meantime, the waiter lit the fire, which was soon blazing pleasantly in the grate a few yards from the four men.

In the meantime, let us take this opportunity to leave the four gentlemen and return to Inspector Clayton. However, if you will permit me, I'll pass over the next ten years, since I am anxious above all to discover whether the Cavaliers of Chaos, aided by the evil Executioners, will finally succeed in saving the world. During those years nothing important has happened related to our case (or in the life of the inspector, in my opinion), and so you will not miss anything crucial if we leap forward to the first of August 1898, a date some of you may be familiar with. That is the day when our tale, after flowing underground for ten years, springs forth on the surface once more.

T
EN YEARS AFTER THE SÉANCE
, the wax cylinder still preserved Inspector Cornelius Clayton's voice urging Sir Henry Blendell to confess. And as on many other occasions during those years, the inspector's words, uttered in a different time and place, were now being broadcast in the Chamber of Marvels, drifting over the mermaids' skeletons, photographs of fairies, werewolf hides, and stuffed Minotaur head stored in its confines. In one corner, elbows resting on a table and lit up dramatically by a small lamp, sat the inspector. During the ten years that had passed, he had changed greatly in appearance, and who hadn't? He was more wan, more haggard, more stooped; in short, he had less sparkle. But those changes only affected the outside. He had experienced the odd turmoil, but nothing on the seismic scale of his first case; and, as time passed, his soul had begun to resemble one of those much-thumbed volumes that always fall open at the same page. It could be said that, contrary to what he had predicted at the time, he still recognized himself in the disenchanted, arrogant youth whose voice was recorded on the cylinder.

Perhaps the only noticeable difference was that he was far less eager to understand the world around him, which had turned into an even more absurd place over those years. There were many events that had made his hair stand on end, throwing up connections as tangled as they were futile for a mind such as his, alert as it was to that kind of detail: after slaying five prostitutes, Jack the Ripper, as the Whitechapel murderer was called, had vanished without trace, taking with him the mystery of his identity. Also, some years later his literary equivalent, Dorian Gray, had unleashed his depravity on London's poorest neighborhoods while his author languished in jail, convicted of sodomy—the same reprehensible activity Prince Albert Victor, the queen's grandson, had been discovered (by Clayton's colleagues at the Yard) engaging in at a male brothel in Cleveland Street. However, the queen's nephew hadn't been locked up anywhere, and the monarchy had chosen to divert the public's attention toward the conquest of South Africa, where heroic deeds no longer celebrated in storybooks still occurred, and where the English race could display its courage and heroism in all its glory by massacring poor Africans. Added to that was the continuous worker unrest, the suffragette demonstrations, and the wars in the colonies, or other events that are more germane to our tale: Margaretta Fox had retracted the statements she had made to
The New York Herald
condemning the spiritualist movement and confessed she had done so for money, and Professor Crookes, who as rumor suggested had finally been knighted, had confirmed in his address to the British Association the existence of that psychic force he had first championed thirty years earlier. And so, much to the displeasure of some, thanks to the abovementioned events and many others, during the ten intervening years the belief in spirits and their emissaries, mediums, had only intensified, something which is crucial to this tale, as you will soon discover.

Despite having surrendered to the world's complex mystery, Clayton still endeavored to bring as much order to it as possible, rather like the fastidious guest who upon encountering a wrinkled tablecloth can't help unconsciously smoothing out the part in front of him. And so he had gone on solving cases, some deadly dull, self-evident almost to the point of being offensive, others interesting enough to occupy his inquiring mind, thus distracting him for a while from the demons that forever plagued him. Although a few of those cases had confronted him once more with the realm of the fantastic, I will refrain from elaborating on them here, in order not to stray from the path I have set myself, possibly never to find it again. Suffice to say, not because it was one of his most exciting cases but owing to the relevance of one of its protagonists to our story, the inspector still felt a desire to investigate a company called Murray's Time Travel. For those of you who don't know, or have forgotten, the aforementioned company had opened for business in the autumn of 1896, shortly after the author H. G. Wells published his famous novel
The Time Machine,
with the aim of bringing Wells's novel to life. For the paltry sum of one hundred pounds, Murray's Time Travel boasted that it could take you to the future—to the year 2000, to be precise. There a battle for possession of the planet was raging between the brave Captain Shackleton, leader of the human resistance army, and his archenemy, the automaton Solomon.

Naturally, Scotland Yard's Special Branch had felt obliged from the outset to investigate the supposed miracle so as to rule out any possibility of fraud, although the reports given by the first time travelers to be interviewed had been so extraordinary that neither Sinclair nor Clayton could imagine anyone being capable of inventing such a brilliant hoax. From their accounts, it appeared that the travelers reached the nebulous future on a time tram called the
Cronotilus,
which traversed the fourth dimension, a pink plain inhabited by dangerous, time-eating dragons. As you will easily appreciate, the two inspectors were more than keen to climb aboard this remarkable tram, but Gilliam Murray, who owned the company, had become a very powerful man overnight and, sheltering behind an army of lawyers, managed to spare his company from inspection. Finally, after a laborious legal battle, a judge had approved the long-awaited warrant that gave Captain Sinclair and his future successor (no one at the Yard doubted that Clayton would step into his boss's shoes when he retired) complete freedom to snoop into Murray's affairs. But just then an unfortunate tragedy had occurred that plunged the country into a long period of mourning: Gilliam Murray, the Master of Time, the man who had opened the doors of the future to the inhabitants of the present, had passed away, devoured by a dragon from the fourth dimension. His company had been closed down and all that remained of Murray's Time Travel was a ramshackle theater in Soho whose dusty façade appeared to conceal no other mystery than decay.

Continuously echoing behind each of Clayton's investigations like the distant rumor of a waterfall was the unsolved puzzle of Mrs. Lansbury's disappearance. The inspector had not stopped thinking about it for a single moment: ten years of toying with the different pieces, rearranging them in a thousand different ways, trying unsuccessfully to make them fit together. And how often over the years had he longed to unearth a new piece that would make sense of the whole? But neither the old lady nor the transparent stranger, to whom she had referred as the Villain, had turned up again, dead or alive. Despite all this, Clayton had done his best from the outset to prevent that mystery from becoming an unsolvable riddle consigned to the dusty archives at Scotland Yard. Following the old lady's disappearance, he had ordered a team of architects and carpenters (including Sir Henry Blendell, who had agreed to collaborate in exchange for a reduction to his sentence) to search the house from top to bottom, in particular the old lady's study, convinced it must contain a false wall, a hidden trapdoor, or some other ingenious device whereby Mrs. Lansbury had been able to escape without unlocking the door. But the accursed room revealed none of those things. It was an ordinary, everyday study. The blood in the street, steps, and hallway was equally ordinary and had finally dried the way ordinary, everyday blood always did, regardless of the curious properties it had revealed to Clayton, proof of which was to be found only in his memory.

Lacking any sense of the direction the investigation should take, and tired of going round in circles with the handful of clues they had, much to Clayton's dismay his department had gradually shelved the case. Two years later, a wealthy merchant had purchased the old lady's house, and from time to time the inspector would pass by it on his way home, contemplating wistfully the incongruous family tableau glimpsed through its windows, in the warm interior where he had once grappled with a transparent creature. It was about this time that he began to accept that the case would never be resolved, that it would become just another drop in the ocean of mysteries engulfing the world. As time went by, the protagonists of those events gradually began to fade, until the whole episode became no more than a hazy memory. Madame Amber hanged herself in the lunatic asylum where she had been confined, unable to bear any more visitations by spirits, whom she claimed were the only ones that troubled to go and visit her. As for Sir Henry Blendell, after serving his sentence, cut short due to his collaboration as well as good behavior, he moved to a small town in New York State where no one knew of his disgrace, and there, according to the occasional reports that made their way back to Clayton, he ran a carpenter's shop that produced ordinary, everyday furniture for ordinary, everyday citizens who had no need of wardrobes or dressers with false bottoms. As I have already mentioned, neither hide nor hair was seen again of Mrs. Lansbury. As for the Villain . . . Clayton had not ruled out the possibility that he had used some kind of disguise or other device to perform the miracles Clayton had witnessed. But over time, he, too, had begun to believe that the creature was supernatural. Outlandish as that might sound, it was after all the simplest explanation, as Captain Sinclair had understood almost from the start.