That seemed true enough. Doyle felt a wave of sympathy for the man: He’s as helpless to control himself as a tuning fork. Any adjacent vibration might set him off. What a predicament. Who’s to say I wouldn’t care to leave my rooms in that case either? thought Doyle.
“My father wanted me to be a doctor,” said Spivey, his voice fluted with exertion. “He was one, too, you see. Surgeon. The same life he’d planned for me. I was a boy, he’d take me round to hospital with him. First time he led me into the wards I…”
“It’s all right,” said Doyle.
Spivey’s eyes misted with tears. “How could I explain to him my horror? I discovered I could see the patients’ illness on them. I could see…these people…covered with…blossoms of waste…flowering on them…weeds consuming a landscape, I could see it…inching its way across them, their disease…eating them alive. I fainted. Couldn’t tell him why. I begged him never to take me back to that place. What if a like illness should trespass onto me? That was the rub. What if I was forced to watch that excrescence slowly make a meal of my own flesh, before my own eyes? I’d go mad. I’d sooner end my own life.”
“I understand, Spivey.”
Shades of Andrew Jackson Davis, the Appalachian mystic, thought Doyle. Spivey had the gift, all right, and it proved too much for him, poor bastard. Never again will I regard this particular hypochondriac’s complaints too lightly. He made elaborate apologies for his intrusion and started toward the door.
“Please—could I trouble you to take this with you. Doctor?” Spivey asked, eyes closed, gesturing weakly toward the shredded picture on the floor. “If you don’t mind. I don’t wish to have it in my house.”
“Certainly, Spivey. No trouble at all.”
Doyle gathered up and pocketed the tatters. He left the depleted Spivey Quince reclining in his chaise, left hand resting on his heart, the right, palm out, touching lightly to his forehead.
“A bald boy in bright colors hangin’ round the Royal Mews. Hope you didn’t lay out too many readies fer that priceless pearl. And me luvely drawin’ torn to bits in the bargain.”
“I’ve known Quince for three years, Larry,” said Doyle. “Something tells me this may be worth looking into.”
“Mother’s Own Biscuits indeed. You know what his problem is; He’s hungry. He needs to get out more. He’s got biscuits on the brain pan. What time’ve you got, guv?”
“A quarter to ten.”
“Right. Mr. Sparks wanted us to run by his flat at ten sharp.”
This was the first Doyle had heard mention of a London residence. “Where is his flat?”
“As it happens, sir? Montague Street, adjacent to Russell.”
Larry whipped the horse and drove the hansom due cast on Oxford to an address on Montague, directly across from the British Museum: number 26, a whitewashed, well-kept, but otherwise nondescript Georgian town house. The carriage was stabled in the rear, they entered, and Doyle followed Larry up a narrow flight of stairs.
“Come in, Larry, and bring Dr. Doyle with you,” Sparks shouted through the door before they’d even knocked.
They entered. Sparks was nowhere to be seen, the room’s only human presence a ruddy-cheeked, middle-aged, roly-poly Presbyterian clergyman. He was seated on a high stool, conducting an experiment at a long chemistry bench covered with a mystifying array of apparatus.
“Charcoal dust on your fingers; you’ve something interesting to tell me,” said Sparks’s voice out of the minister’s mouth.
If one wasn’t aware of his genius for disguise, thought Doyle, the only possible explanation would be demonic possession. He replayed for Sparks his visit to Spivey Quince.
“Eminently worth investigating,” said Sparks.
Doyle squelched a prideful impulse to shame Larry with a look and glanced around the room. Shades were drawn—Doyle doubted they were ever opened, so close and musky was the air—and every inch of available wall lined with bulging bookshelves. A stack of index cabinets filled one corner. Above them a bull’s-eye target of thatched straw with the letters VR spelled out in bullet holes. Victoria Regina. A strange way for Sparks to demonstrate devotion, but a sort of tribute nonetheless. The largest map of London Doyle had ever seen, studded with legions of red-and blue-headed pins, consumed the wall behind the chemistry bench.
“What do the pins signify?” asked Doyle.
“Evil,” said Sparks. “Patterns. Criminals are generally thickheaded and inclined to ritualize their lives. The higher the intelligence, the less predictable the behavior.”
“The devil’s chessboard,” said Larry. “That’s what we calls it.”
A tall glass-front highboy standing in the opposite corner caught Doyle’s eye. It displayed a diverse collection of antique or exotic weaponry, from primitive Stone Age daggers to flintlock muskets to a cluster of octagonal silver stars.
“See anything in there that you’d prefer to your revolver?” asked Sparks.
“I prefer the predictable,” said Doyle. “What are these little silver gewgaws?”
“Shinzaku. Japanese throwing stars. Absolutely deadly. Kill within seconds.”
Doyle opened the cabinet and picked out one of the gadgets: expertly crafted from high-tensile steel, edges serrated like fishhooks that were thin and viciously sharp. It sat as lightly in the hand as an oyster cracker.
“I must say. Jack, wicked as it feels to the touch, it doesn’t look all that dangerous,” said Doyle.
“Of course you have to dip them in poison first.”
“Ahh.”
“Care to try a few? Terribly easy to conceal. You just have to 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 Larry.
“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 roo
t 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 flat 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 world; 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 that 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.”