Barry threw down the hammer; the pistons spasmed twice and then caught steel on steel. Friction threw sparks into the air. With the protesting shriek and groan of rusty muscles, the wheels inched slowly forward on the tracks.
“We’re movin’!” Barry shouted over the engine. He stuck his head out the side window and guided them toward the tunnel, controlling his impulse to blow the steam whistle out of sheer exuberance.
“Where will it take us?” asked Doyle, nearly sagging with relief.
“On to London if our fuel holds and the tracks don’t end,” said Sparks, patting the cab wall like a canny horse trader. “I’ve always fancied a private rail car. This little charmer could come in right handy.”
The chamber closed down around the tracks at the far end. Barry had to pull his head back inside the window as they rolled slowly into a narrow tunnel cleaving naturally through the earth. The walls squeezed in until their clearance was only a scant few inches.
“Do you suppose they’ll kill them, Jack?” Doyle asked soberly, his mind still on the madman and his manservant.
Sparks grew more somber. “Yes, I imagine they will. I would imagine they already have.”
“Nicholson had something they wanted,” said Doyle after a moment.
“Two things: his land and his son. Both of which they’ve now had in their possession for some months.”
“The land could be for any number of purposes—”
“Agreed—too early to speculate. We need more information.”
“But why the boy?”
Sparks thought for a moment. “Control. A way to control his mother.”
“But it seems clear, doesn’t it, that she was a confederate all along,” said Doyle, much as it pained him to think poorly of the woman.
“A possibility, although we can’t know what sort of coercion they brought to bear on her—precisely what the boy would have been good for.”
“That seemed to be the case on the night she was killed.”
“Consider the scenario that, feigned or genuine, her grief over the child’s ‘kidnap’ was skillfully employed to lure you into their trap. Her usefulness expired, they double-crossed and murdered both the Lady and her hapless brother.”
“It fits, although the brother’s role is rather ill-defined.”
“He’s called away from school on urgent business; she’s enlisted his help against coconspirators she can no longer trust. Or perhaps he was in concert all along, putting pressure on from another angle. You said he seemed to be berating her while they waited at the door.”
“If I didn’t know better, Jack, I’d almost think you were defending the woman.” But in the dim glow of the lantern, Doyle could see a dark dissatisfaction lining Sparks’s face.
“Something’s not right,” he said.
“On the other hand,” said Doyle, remembering the light in her deep blue eyes, “all we have to support the idea she was in league with them are the semicoherent ravings of a deranged and jilted husband.”
Sparks didn’t reply, eyes withdrawn, lost in some private ratiocination. They rode slowly through the narrow tunnel in silence.
“There’s a light up ahead!” Barry announced.
As best as the walls would allow, they peered out into the tunnel ahead where the beam of the headlamp was losing ground to the emerging light of day. Moments later the train broke free of the confines of the earth and spirited them into the open air for the first time since they entered the misfortunate house.
“Bravo, Barry!”
The tracks hugged the slope of a sheer ravine, a river running swiftly below. In the distance behind them, up a steep slope and above the trees, peered the machicolations of Topping’s highest towers. Thick, quarrelsome pillars of black smoke spewed around them into a threatening gray sky. There might be rain, those clouds suggested. But even a deluge would not come in time to spare the venerable life of Topping Manor.
“They’ve put the torch to it,” said Barry in dismay. “All that silver…”
“Maybe they didn’t find the door. Maybe they think we’re trapped inside,” said Doyle hopefully. “If they believe we’re dead, they’ll slacken off the chase.”
“He would see me quartered and then watch the body burn before making such an assumption,” said Sparks grimly.
Doyle studied Sparks as he looked back at the burning building, sweeping the horizon for any sign of pursuit, his eyes as taut and feral as a predatory bird.
“Who is he, Jack?” Doyle asked quietly. “The man in black. You know him, don’t you?”
“He’s my brother,” said Sparks.
chapter eleven
NEMESIS
THE TRACKS RAN TO THE SOUTH AND EAST ALONG THE RAVINE, parallel to the river for the next few miles, the slope descending gradually down to join the river on the flat seacoastal plain. Through their constant vigilance, the three men aboard the train were given no indication that the enemy had gained awareness of their escape. Not long after reaching level ground, they intersected a sweeping half-moon curve of rail that bowed off to the east. At Sparks’s instruction, Barry brought the engine to a halt, leapt from the cab, and threw the switch that would jump them to the tracks leading away from the river. As the engine came back up to speed. Sparks and Doyle stripped to their shirts, shoveled coal from the tender to the scuttle, and shouldered the scuttle to the furnace. Despite their exposure to the frigid winds, the hard labor soon had them soaked in sweat. They banked the fire to maximum blaze, pulling as much power from the roiling steam as the boiler would yield, the throttle wide open, exacting as substantial an advantage on the race back to London as they could from their sturdy iron steed.
Nothing further was offered by Sparks about his brother. He entered another of those spells of remoteness that invited no inquiry, and they had the intensity of what soon became backbreaking work to divert them. Barry spurred the train on ferociously, taking curves at precarious speeds, never slowing for occasional stray livestock, using only the whistle and the sheer power of his will as he screamed at the animals to clear the tracks. More than one rural stationmaster ran out from his office as they roared past his post to stare dumbfounded at Barry, who responded with a wave and a roguish tip of the hat, an unscheduled juggernaut jeopardizing the methodical orderliness of the world of trains. Barry displayed an intimate knowledge of the spidery network of tracks that laced the Kent and Sussex countryside, switching them on every occasion away from primary routes onto seldom-used freight lines. At one point, when they came alongside a parallel set of tracks and began to gain on the passenger train carrying New Year’s Eve travelers from Dover to London, Barry whipped his charge like a jockey in the homestretch of the Irish Sweepstakes, whooping and hollering and throwing his hat in the air as they raced past the unnerved rival engineer. Barry was a daredevil, plain and simple.
Well before dark, Barry by necessity slowed their pace when they entered the labyrinthine tangle of switches and turnarounds congesting the arteries of every approach to London, the time their breakneck sprint across the open countryside had gained them forfeited by these final miles. When they finally pulled onto a sidetrack off a private yard in Battersea, owned by some unnamed acquaintance of Sparks, night had firmly fallen. Leaving Barry to secure the engine’s harbor, Sparks and Doyle walked to a nearby busy thoroughfare and hailed a hansom cab. Sparks directed the driver to an address across the river, somewhere on the Strand.
“Where do we go, Jack?” asked Doyle. “They seem more than capable of finding me anywhere.”
“They’ve anticipated our movements, which have up until now been necessarily and painfully predictable. It’s a new game. A crowd’s the best refuge on earth, and London’s riddled with more holes than a bloodhound could suss out in a lifetime,” said Sparks, fastidiously wiping the coal dust from his face with a handkerchief. “I say, Doyle, you should get a look at yourself; you’re as black as the ace of spades.”
“From this point on, I would greatly
appreciate being consulted about our plans and movements, Jack,” said Doyle, trying largely in vain to remove the grime with his sleeve. “I daresay I’ll have the occasional thought or opinion that could have some positive effect on our efforts.”
Sparks looked at him with affectionate amusement, which he nipped under cover of solemnity before Doyle could take offense. “That has been established beyond dispute. The hardships of these last few days would’ve reduced most men to runny porridge.”
“I do appreciate it. But to put it more bluntly, I should like to know exactly what you know. That is, everything you know.”
“You’re perilously close already—”
“Close will, I’m afraid, no longer be sufficient to my needs, Jack. I shall honor whatever secrets you impart to the death. I trust my actions to date give you no reason whatsoever to doubt the sense of taking me further into your confidence.”
“I have no such doubts.”
“Good. When should we begin?”
“After a hot bath, over oyster brochette, lobster, and caviar, accompanied by the sound of vintage corks popping,” said Sparks. “It is New Year’s Eve, after all. What do you say to that?”
“I would have to say,” said Doyle, his mouth already watering, “that is a plan I can endorse without the slightest reservation.”
The cab deposited them in the center of the Strand, one of London’s liveliest avenues, never busier than on this moonlit New Year’s Eve, before a not particularly inviting lodging hotel. A dingy awning announced it as the Hotel Melwyn. Two steps up from a doss house, a full flight down from even the threadbare middle-class accommodations to which Doyle was accustomed, it was nonetheless one of the few places in town where two gentlemen—rather, a gentleman and his valet—blackened head to toe by a day’s hard labor in a coal car, could draw nothing more from clientele and staff than a passing disinterested glance.
With a wink at the knowing clerk, Sparks signed the register as “Milo Smalley, Esquire” and paid cash for two adjoining rooms near the stairs on the second floor. Baths were requested for both men and inestimably enjoyed in a communal chamber at the far end of the hall where more than a few gentlemen were taking the waters. A cursory monitoring of the room’s level of chat gave Doyle to realize that, however modest its exterior, the Melwyn seemed the way station of choice for an entire class of discriminating, and sporting, men-about-town. As he emerged from the bath, for the first time since shedding his mustache and muttonchop whiskers, Doyle caught sight of himself in a mirror. Add the cosmetic wire-rimmed glasses Sparks had lent him from his bag of tricks, plus the valet’s haircut Barry had administered, trimmed to the bristle, and Doyle was greeted by a face he had to look at twice to be certain it was his own.
Heartened by the substantial changes wrought in his appearance, scrubbed, shaved, and the first to return to their rooms, Doyle was surprised to discover unfamiliar luggage near the door, fresh evening clothes laid out on the bed, and the esteemed Larry-brother-of-Barry lighting a fire in the hearth. Delighted by this unexpected reappearance, Doyle was near to the point of embracing their diminutive accomplice, who seemed as equally pleased to clap eyes once again on him. Though Doyle was unreasonably desirous of relating to Larry an account of their adventures, Larry held up a hand to silence him before he’d uttered a word.
“Beggin’ your pardon, guv, but me brother’s already dealt me the hand, from soup to nuts to the hail and rain—train, that is: There’s the gods smilin’ if ever they have—and a passing strange tale it is, too, sir—and by the way, if I might comment, I do congratulate you on the haircut; I see my brother’s fine handiwork in evidence here—he was apprenticed to the service of a barber for a few misguided months many moons ago; it was the barber’s daughter he wished to service, truth be known—but I must say, Doctor, that with the new trim and the removal of your side levers there you have in the totality of your being more than achieved the desired effect of deflecting one’s apprehension of your own true nature; why, truth is, if I hadn’t known it was you, I’d’ve hardly known ya.”
“You’ve been busy, I see, Larry,” said Sparks, toweling off as he reentered the room. “Will you tell what you’ve discovered, or shall I?”
Larry glanced trepidatiously at Doyle.
“No confidence will be violated,” said Sparks. “The Doctor has put down such roots into the secret soil of our campaign, it would take dynamite to dislodge him. You may speak freely—no, wait!” Sparks narrowed his eyes and scrutinized Larry, who smiled bashfully, well acquainted with the routine to follow.
“After your pleasure, sir,” said Larry, and then with a wink to Doyle, “Fancy this, then.”
“A survey of Drummond’s house informed you the General has not returned since we last spied him departing for the north two days before Christmas. You have discovered the London address of Lord and Lady Nicholson, a yellow-brick two-story detached in Hampstead Heath, a house equally devoid of occupants at the time of your visit. You have within the hour rendezvoused with Barry at your favorite public house, the Elephant and Castle, where he told you of our recent enterprises while you drank two pints of bitters and ate a…shepherd’s pie.”
Larry shook his head and smiled broadly at Doyle. “See? I love it when ’e does that.”
“Come now, Larry, tell me; how have I done?”
“Spot on, sir, ’cepting it wer’n’t shepherd’s pie, sir; it was a bit of kate and sydney for me tonight.”
“Steak and kidney, of course, it’s a holiday night; you splurged,” said Sparks, as he began to dress himself, then to Doyle, “Crumbs on his jacket.”
“And a spot of gravy on his cravat, here,” said Doyle, pointing, up to the challenge. “Not to mention the clinging, persistent odor of stale hops and cheap rolling tobacco common to public houses.”
“Mary and Joseph, don’t tell me: Not you, too, sir?”
“Go on, Doyle; tell him how I arrived at my conclusions,” said Sparks.
Doyle studied the incredulous Larry for a moment. “Determining General Drummond’s whereabouts would have been your primary task upon returning to London. If he were in town, I doubt you’d have had time to even enjoy that drink with your brother, let alone find and fetch us fresh clothes. Therefore, the quick resolution of your first objective allowed you to proceed with the second; by no mean stretch of logic a search for the Nicholsons’ London home. There is a fine yellow powder ground into the knees and elbows of your clothes, no streaks or tears indicate that any sudden or violent movements were undertaken, so the two-story house of yellow brick you then methodically climbed and gained entry to was also fairly obviously empty. The distinctive red clay on the edges and soles of your boots is peculiar to the hills of Hampstead Heath. By the way, the Elephant and Castle is also my favorite public house, and I have enjoyed many a fine steak and kidney pie there in my day.”
“Well done, Doyle!”
“’Cor…’ cor blimey…” Larry took off his hat and shook his head.
“If Larry’s been rendered speechless, we should alert the newspapers: It’s a phenomenon more rare than a full solar eclipse,” said Sparks.
“And ‘ere I was thinkin’ me and Barry was the only twins in our immediate circle,” said Larry, regaining the use of his tongue. “Two halves of the beechnut is wot we got ‘ere. Romulus and Remus. Flip sides of the same shillin’. We’ve done more than well to have you with us, sir,” he said sincerely.
“Thank you, Larry. I take that as high praise indeed,” replied Doyle.
“Aren’t you two the old sentimental sweethearts,” said Sparks, finishing the loop on his bow tie. Larry and Doyle separated, somewhat abashed, Doyle to his dressing, Larry to the crumbs on his jacket. “Larry, what about our dinner?”
“Nine-thirty at the Criterion—oysters on the half shell, lobsters on the boil, gay and frisky and a bottle of whiskey—they’re expectin’ you.”
They finished dressing for that happily anticipated appointment and prese
nted themselves on the stroke of the half hour not far down the Strand at the revered doors of the Criterion Long Bar. Their elegant evening wear rendered them invisible among the flood tide of swells frequenting the dining room, the perfect camouflage on this most festive of London nights. Many was the time that Doyle, the beleaguered medical student, had pressed his nose to the windows outside, viewing the haute monde in their natural habitat with the curiosity and envy of a snubbed anthropologist, but never had he crossed over the storied threshold until this evening.
Sparks was well known to the maître d’. Chilled champagne awaited them, a platoon of attentive captains and waiters standing by to assure that their glasses never emptied. An unctuous manager extended personal felicitations of the house, and a sumptuous, gout-inviting succession of mouth-watering comestibles proceeded to rain down on them like the fortuitous bounty of a culinary god. Doyle scarcely had breath to speak between bites and gulps, throwing himself into the consumption of the feast with bacchanalian abandon. The champagne carbonated the shadow of doom that had dogged their last few days and effervesced it to oblivion. Around them the room seemed impossibly lithe and gay and filled with light, women glowing with Athenian glamour, the men fortified by some Herculean ideal. What a place! What a city, what a dynamic race of people! It wasn’t until an ambrosian flambé of cherries, meringue, and vanilla ice cream had landed in front of them that the weightless balloon of Doyle’s undivided pleasure begin to sink back into the range of conscious awareness. The dinner was not yet at an end and already felt like a dream, for he knew that the moment their discussion, which up through the supernatural dessert had been as carefree as a clergyman’s Monday, turned back to the life that awaited them outside of this cloistered Olympus, the bill would come due in more ways than one.