“True. And my family did travel regularly through Europe, particularly Germany, but I can’t for the life of me surmise how you arrived at that.”
“An educated guess: Germany is the preferred destination for upper-class families of your parents’ generation attempting to instill in their children some systematic appreciation of literature and culture. I suspect the Germanic lineage of our last few sets of royals has had much if not everything to do with that tendency among the landed gentry.”
“Well reasoned,” Sparks conceded. “One misstep: I do have an older brother.”
“Frankly, I’m surprised. You bear the natural confidence and ambition of an eldest and only child.”
“My brother is considerably older. He never traveled with us and spent the better part of my early life away at school. I hardly knew him.”
“That explains it then.”
“I did attend Cambridge—Caius and Magdalene—studying medicine and the natural sciences, which you arrived at through my familiarity with the town itself and the apparent ease with which I retrieved the information regarding young Nicholson.”
“Right again.”
“I also briefly attended Christ Church at Oxford.”
“Theology?”
“Yes. And, I’m embarrassed to say, amateur theatricals.”
“Your knowledge of makeup and disguise led me to it. The effectiveness of your Indian ruse led me to believe you’d been to the Orient.”
“I never entered the military, sorry, but I have traveled to the Far East and did indeed spend many hours in the comparative study of religions.”
“And the United States?”
“You did not fail to notice my occasional use of the American vernacular.”
Doyle nodded.
“I spent eight months tramping the Eastern Seaboard as an actor on tour with the Sasanoff Shakespearean Company,” said Sparks with the tone of a penitent in the confessional.
“I knew it!”
“I thought Mercutio my finest hour on the stage, although in Boston they seemed to favor my Hotspur,” he said, mocking his own vanity. “Now I follow your line of thinking on every one of these deductions save one: How on earth did you know I play the violin?”
“I once treated a violinist of the London orchestra for a badly sprained wrist sustained in a bicycling accident. He had a distinctive pattern of small calluses, from fingering the strings, on the pads of the fingertips of his left hand. You possess that same pattern; I assume you play the instrument as devotedly, if not as expertly, as my patient.”
“Marvelous. I do congratulate you on your powers of observation.”
“Thank you. I pride myself on them.”
“Most people drift through life in a perpetual haze of self-conscious introspection that entirely prevents their seeing the world as it is. Your diagnostic training has granted you the priceless habit of paying attention to detail, and you have clearly labored to develop that skill to a profound level. It suggests that you have also worked with equal diligence to develop an advanced philosophy of living.”
“I guess I’ve always felt the less said about such things, the better,” said Doyle modestly.
“‘Let actions define the man for the world, while the music of his soul plays for an audience of one.’”
“Shakespeare?”
“No, Sparks,” Sparks said with a grin. “Shall I have a go at you then?”
“What? You mean, what have appearances told you about me?”
“The prospect that I’ve met my match in the exercise of observational deduction brings my competitive tendencies racing to the fore.”
“How will I know these are legitimate inferences and not facts you’ve gathered by some covert means?”
“You won’t,” said Sparks, flashing his grin again. “You were born in Edinburgh, Catholic parents of Irish descent and modest means. You fished and hunted extensively in youth. You were educated in Jesuit parochial schools. Your lifelong passions have been literature and medicine. You attended medical school at the University of Edinburgh, where you studied under an inspirational professor who encouraged you to develop your powers of observation and deduction beyond the scope of their diagnostic application. Despite your medical training, you have never relinquished your dream of one day making your living exclusively as a man of letters. Despite your indoctrination in the Church of Rome, you renounced your family’s faith after attending séances and encountering experiences too difficult to reconcile with an adherence to any religious dogma. You now consider yourself a confirmed, albeit open-minded, agnostic. You are very handy with a revolver….”
And so they passed the remainder of the afternoon, this meeting of the minds a great refresher for men so accustomed to the solitary exercise of their more acute faculties. Although occasional farms and one or two more developed settlements appeared in the distance, they stayed to their primeval path, quieting hunger and thirst as they arose from the stores that Larry had left them. They passed through meadows and birch woods and blasted, fallow flatlands, until sundown found them at path’s end on the banks of the River Colne, a wide and lazy waterway meandering through the fields and retiring farming villages of the Essex countryside. After a quiet evening meal under a sheltering oak, as darkness fell, Larry appeared again, putting in to shore near their camp at the helm of a twenty-foot sloop, seaworthy and strong, a lantern hanging off the bow. They boarded her while Larry held the gunnels. A worn canvas lean-to and a pallet of blankets offered shelter amidships. Under a clear night sky and the light of a three-quarter moon, they pushed off and drifted silently downstream with the current, passing unnoticed through a sleepy riverside town. At Sparks’s insistence, Doyle took the first turn in the bunk, and before the boat had traveled another half-mile downriver, the gentle rolling of the water carried the weary doctor down into the dreamless arms of grateful sleep.
The river conveyed them uneventfully through the night, past Halstead and Rose Green, Wakes Colne and Eight Ash, wending through the knotty sprawl of ancient Colchester near dawn and then down past Wivenhoe, where the river widened out, preparing to meet the sea. Although they passed a number of barges and other small ships at anchor during the night, here they began to encounter for the first time larger vessels under steam. Larry hoisted the mainsail to aid their progress against the incoming tide and a following southeasterly bellowed the canvas, skating them around the cumbersome, cargo-laden traffic that snarled the channel.
Two brief, vertical catnaps were all Sparks had allowed himself during the journey and seemed to be all he required. Doyle slept through the night, waking refreshed and more than a little startled to find them passing landfall and approaching the open sea. With the wind full at their backs, they came about and made for the south. Sparks took the rudder as they rolled into the heavier swells, Larry took his turn on the blankets, and Doyle joined Sparks aft. Although conditions were favorable, Doyle could see by his touch on the helm and his feel for the wind that Sparks was an expert sailor. They soon left all sight of the river behind, keeping the barren reaches between Sales and Holliwell Point visible to starboard.
The restless touch of the waves and the air’s salt tang brought back to Doyle a cornucopia of long-forgotten memories of days at sea. The pleasure they imparted must have crept into his features, for Sparks soon offered him the rudder. He gladly accepted. Sparks settled himself comfortably down into a coil of rope, pulled a packet of tobacco from his boot, and filled a pipe. With only the crisp crack of the sail and the screech of the seabirds to distract him, Doyle greedily drank in the riches of the unobstructed seascape. Whatever manner of ordeal they had embarked upon seemed infinitely more manageable out here, in an open boat dwarfed by the ocean’s immensity, a sight Doyle had oftentimes found comforting in far rougher waters than these.
It suddenly occurred to him: Why not complete the fugitive act and make for the Continent? As a seafaring man, Doyle knew there were a thousand distant, exotic ports of c
all into which a man could vanish and re-create himself, places his nameless, faceless persecutors would never hope to find. As he considered this possibility, it occurred to him how remarkably little bound him to his current life—family, friends, a few patients—but no wife, no child, no onerous financial obligations. Remove the sentiment of love and discover how dangerously fragile are rendered one’s ties to the familiar world. How seductive the possibility of utter change. It was all Doyle could do to resist ruddering hard to port and setting course for the unknown. Perhaps that was the genuine siren’s song of legend, the temptation to jettison the ballast of the past and rush weightless and unencumbered down a dark tunnel of rebirth. Perhaps that was the soul’s destiny regardless.
But as he stood at the brink of that decision, into the vacuum created by that shimmering lure of escape returned his primal conviction that when confronted by authentic evil—and he felt certain this is what pursued him—to move off one’s ground without a fight was an equal if not greater evil. An evil of failure and cowardice. One might pass a lifetime, or an endless string of lifetimes, without ever facing such an unequivocal assault as this against the covenant of what a man holds true about himself. Better to lose your life in defense of its sanctity than to turn tail and live out what remained of one’s allotted days as a beaten dog. It was a hollow refuge that gave no shelter from self-loathing.
So he did not steer their boat to the east. No matter if his enemies were more numerous or powerful, they could flay the skin from his muscles and boil the bones before receiving the satisfaction of surrender. He felt fierce and cold-minded and righteous. And if they had harnessed some unholy power, so much the better: They were still flesh, and all flesh could be made to bleed.
“I don’t suppose you remember the name of that last publisher you submitted your book to?” Sparks asked, gazing lazily over the side.
“Could have been any one of several. My account book was lost in the shambles of my room.”
“How unfortunate.”
“How did they do it, Jack? I can manufacture an explanation for nearly everything else that’s happened—the séance and even beyond—but I can’t for the life of me see that one clear.”
Sparks nodded thoughtfully, chewing on his pipe. “From your description, it appears the parties responsible have happened upon some method to effect a change in the molecular structure of physical objects.”
“But that would imply they’re actually in possession of some dreadful arcane power.”
“Yes, I suppose it would,” Sparks said dryly.
“I find that unacceptable.”
“If that is in fact what they’ve done, our opinions on it won’t provide much of a deterrent, old boy. And while we’re on the subject of inadequate explanations, there’s also the matter of the gray hoods.”
“You said that you didn’t think those men were…exactly alive.”
“You’re the doctor.”
“For an informed opinion, I’d need to examine one of them.”
“Given their persistence, I’d say there’s a better than fair chance you’ll have that opportunity.”
Their conversation had roused Larry from his rest. He crawled out from under the lean-to, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Larry’s seen one of them up close, haven’t you Larry?” asked Sparks.
“Wot’s ’at, sir?” he asked, rummaging in his saddlebag for a sandwich.
“The gray hoods. Tell Dr. Doyle.”
“Right. This was a few months back, sir,” he said, tearing carnivorously into his Westphalian ham and cheese. “I’m on the job of tailin’ a certain gent’l’man wot we’ve had before our attention for some time—”
“A material suspect in my investigation,” added Sparks.
“Right. Now every Tuesday night this gent made a reg’lar habit of leavin’ his fine Mayfair home by way of patronizin’ a notorious, if not celebrated, house of joy in the nearby neighborhood of Soho, where his tastes tended to run in a somewhat unconventional direction—”
“That’s not our concern at the moment, Larry,” Sparks corrected.
“I read you correctly, sir. So after establishin’ this pattern of the gent’l’man’s migratory tendencies over a period of time, on this one occasion, ’stead of following him to his weekly assignation, I speculate upon myself to remain behind, enter the man’s house in his absence, and have a butchers about the premises to see wot’s wot,” he continued with his mouth full, pausing for a generous tug of beer to wash down the last few Promethean bites.
“Old habits die hard,” said Doyle dryly.
“Not to feather my own nest, sir, no sir, I’m right sworn off it, me and Barry both, God’s truth,” he said, crossing himself. “No, I cased his ’omestead in the strictest eventuality the gent might by chance’ve left some telling trifle lyin’ about wot would lead us direct to a fuller understandin’ of him and his compatriots’ devious intentions.”
“A list of communiqué of some sort,” added Sparks.
“Just so. Even if such a thing had been left for instance inside a safe secreted away behind a map of the Hyperborean wilderness or a fancy oil portrait of his cows and kisses—that is, his missus—fussied up somewhat, idealized like, a bit shorter in the tooth and slimmer amidships than she might naturally be if truth were known, that’s the artist’s prerogative after all, idn’t it, and I’m sure the bloke was paid handsomely for his trouble; these artistic types, he don’t need a map to know which side his bread’s buttered on—sorry, I digress. Whatever the case may be, I was nonetheless bound and determined and in full possession of the required talents to secure such an item, wherever it might be found.” He finished the sandwich, drained his beer, belched explosively, and tossed the bottle overboard.
“So I opened the safe. Unfortunately, I discovered within its confines nothing much more interestin’ than a fat stack of stock certificates—worth a queen bee’s honey, they were, too; right difficult to move on the street, mind you, you’d raise a lotta eyebrows luggin’ that lot ’round, although the old Larry and Barry wouldn’t’a half minded havin’ a bash, not for a minute—along with a few French postcards of recent vintage that in no way contradicted, in fact tended to confirm wot I ’ad already ascertained regarding the man’s unorthodox intimate preferences, and finally last will and testament leavin’ lock, stock, and barrel of his considerable estate to none other than the fat woman so generously depicted in the paintin’.”
“So in other words you found nothing,” Doyle said impatiently, annoyed by the man’s incorrigible loquacity.
“Not what I’d hoped for, no sir. However, after tossing the rest of the joint with no less disappointing returns, as I made my way back through the basement to the casement window wherein I had gained my entrance, I spied a door standing ajar. A mudroom or root cellar, which had escaped my attention on the way in. But wit’ me eyes now more accustomed to the darkness, I noticed a shoe inside that door. A boot, to be exact, standing motionless. I could see a pants leg as well, to which said boot was clearly attached. I stood there, still as Nelson’s statue, and studied this tableau for a full ten minutes. It was a hobnailed boot, steel around the toe, clean as a baby’s bonnet. A very serious boot this was. A boot not to be trifled with. One swift kick to the midsection and your insides are as completely rearranged as a newlywed’s furniture. During those ten minutes, that boot never moved. I tossed a penny into that room that in the stillness of that basement sounded like a naval gun salute. Not a twitch. This emboldened me no end. I took the initiative. I opened the door.”
“One of the gray hoods,” said Doyle.
“That it was, sir. Seated on a stool, in the dark, face covered, hands on its knees thusly—”
“It didn’t react?”
“To the extent, sir, that my thought at this point was I had stumbled upon the spoils of some mysterious theft from Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors. This figure before me did absolutely nothing to suggest to my senses
that I was sharing this room with a living human being.”
“What did you do?”
“I lit a candle from me pocket in order to carry out a more thorough examination. I cautiously reached out and touched the man’s hand. A quick jab, like that. Nothing. I dripped hot candle wax on him. When that failed to win a response, I took out my pigsticker and gave him a nick. Never moved a muscle. But even though that skin was gray and cold as fish on a plate, something in my little brain kept telling me the man was not dead, not in the way of my understanding. Caught a chill, I did. The hair on the back of me neck stood up and said ’ello, and I’ve been in the presence of the recently departed more than a few times without so much as a never-you-mind. This lay entirely outside of my experience.”
“Did you feel for a pulse or heartbeat?”
“I confess the thought of touching that squiff again was a bit too rich for my blood. I did what I thought the next best thing. I took off the hood.”
“The blue thread—”
“Yes, sir, he did have a line of the blue thread, here, binding the lips, a rough job it was, too, and recent by the look of it—”
“And the eyes?”
“The eyes were closed, but the lids were not sewn shut—”
“Was he breathing?”
“Let him finish, Doyle,” said Sparks.
“I don’t know, sir, I didn’t really have the luxury to check out that aspect of the situation, you see, ’cause when I got my first good peep at his airs and graces, I realized I knew this fella—”
“You knew him?”
“Yes, sir. Lansdown Dilks, a strong-armer from Wapping, a past master, he was, we all knew him in the life, a very bad character, too. That is until they pinched him cold, breakin’ the neck of a shopkeeper in Brixton—”
“He was imprisoned?”
“Imprisoned, convicted of murder most foul, and packed off to prison three years ago. So you can imagine my surprise to find the old boy in a Mayfair root cellar with his lips upholstered like a windup soldier waitin’ for a twist on the key in its back—”