The Dead Assassin: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (13 page)

“It’s not just the lost performances. Much as it pains me to be reduced to the role of a grubby accountant tallying piles of pounds and pennies, there are financial repercussions to consider. Do not forget, although the performances are canceled and the public refunded their money, actors and sceneshifters must still be paid. The theater rent ticks on. There are many outheld hands grasping to be paid and most of them are currently rifling through my pockets.”

Conan Doyle cleared his throat. “If you’re temporarily short of funds, I am doing quite well at the present time and would be happy to lend—”

Wilde raised a hand to silence his friend before he could say more. “Your kindness is noted and appreciated, Arthur, but I would sooner borrow money from my very worst enemy than from my very best friend. For nothing curdles a friendship faster than indebtedness. I might obtain the loan of lucre from any quarter, but where can I obtain friendship and loyalty?”

“You do live rather extravagantly. Perhaps if you tightened your purse strings.”

Wilde recoiled as if from a blow.

“Extravagant?
Moi?
” he said, pouring himself another glass of whiskey from the open bottle. Conan Doyle eyed the label—it was a top-drawer Scots whiskey he personally could not afford to drink.

“I am perfectly at ease with the notion of sacrifice, it’s giving things up that I cannot abide.”

Conan Doyle shifted his feet and said, “I, ah … I have an acquaintance with me. A friend. The young lady I told you of: Miss Jean Leckie. She is waiting outside. My friend had rather been hoping to meet the famous Oscar Wilde. However, if you are indisposed, I suppose I must disappoint her.”

Instantly, the scowling, fretting man vanished. The large Irishman rose from his chair. Shot his cuffs. Retied his tie. Then, like a cape, he drew upon his shoulders the persona of Oscar Wilde.

“Forgive my rudeness, Arthur.” He seized the champagne bottle, loosened the cork with a twist, and pulled it from the ice bucket. “Pray, bring your friend before me, and I shall give her an audience to be remembered.”

As Conan Doyle escorted Miss Jean Leckie into the room, Wilde fired the champagne cork with a flick of his thumb. Bubbly fountained and splashed upon the floor.

“Greetings and salutations, Miss Leckie.” Wilde bowed and threw her a
salaam
gesture with his free hand. “Would you do me the considerable honor of joining us in a libation?” He charged three waiting champagne flutes and presented one to her. “Friends of Arthur’s must always be greeted with a glass of bubbly, a bow, and kiss upon the cheek.” Wilde moved forward and kissed her lightly on both cheeks, in the continental style. Jean Leckie cooed with delight, eyes sparkling brighter than the bubbles effervescing in her champagne flute.

“I offer a toast,” Wilde said, raising his glass.

“A toast to what?” asked Conan Doyle.

The Irishman regarded him with a raised eyebrow, as if he were the slow child in the class. “Why, to Oscar Wilde, who else? The luckiest man I know.”

“Lucky? Two seconds ago, you were quite in the dumps.”

“Yes, but that was two seconds ago. What are you, Arthur, an historian? For Oscar Wilde, there is only the present moment. No, I give you a toast to the most fortunate fellow I know: Oscar Wilde, for a man who has such wonderful friends must always count himself lucky.”

The three chinked glasses and said together, “Cheers!”

CHAPTER   11

AN UNHOLY RESURRECTION

An underground cellar, windowless and dark. The cobblestone walls and arched brick ceiling hold the dank-earth chill of the subterranean. The space is bare apart from a huddle of tables strewn with beakers, surgical instruments, a bone doctor’s collection of amputation saws and scalpels. On a second table, glass flasks of colored liquids warm on alcohol burners, chemicals bubble in retorts. A third table holds a brassy scatter of mechanical gears, tiny pistons, flywheels. Dominating the space is a single piece of hideous furniture: a restraining chair built of huge timbers. A human figure sits pinioned in the chair.

Cold. Inert. Dead.

Weirdly, the corpse is strapped in place by iron bands at the ankles, the wrists, the forearms. A heavy metal band encircles the chest while a thinner strap pinions the head to the chair back.

A sheet of frosted glass hangs behind the chair, and now two hideous demons step from behind. They hover over the immobile corpse: their eyes glassy disks, mouths squirming with dangling proboscises. Although no, not demons, but men in rubber devil masks, the kind that might be obtained from theatrical costumers, modified to accept glass lenses and rubber hoses fitted with breathing filters. They lean, heads together, and confer in muffled voices.

“Is it ready?”

“Yes.”

“Did you inject the adrenaline?”

“Of course.”

“Are you certain? You did not forget this time?”

“The injection
was
given.”

“What about the damage? The bullet holes?”

“All repaired. I patched the torn arteries with veins stripped from an ox.”

“And the blood?”

“Replaced.”

“All eight pints?”

“Of course.”

“Where did you obtain so much blood?”

“A patient in the infirmary died.”

“Died of what?”

“Lack of blood.”

A dark laugh.

“Very well, then, let the reanimation begin.”

The taller demon hovers over the corpse. Hands with long, thin fingers, supple in kid gloves, tear open the dead man’s shirt (which, like the rag-bin trousers and scuff-toed boots, are beggar’s offcasts) revealing a chest that has been surgically violated postmortem—a rectangular opening sawed into the sternum and ribs so that a shiny brass box could be inserted into the chest cavity. The surgery is recent and done without the care shown to a living patient, for the enormous sutures (made with a sailmaker’s needle and thread) are angry red and rusty with blood.

The gloved hand slides a finger along the brassy surface of the metal box, searching for and finding a shallow indent. A finger depresses and a metal chute springs open. The other hand brings forward a smoked glass jar and pours in a trickle of white pellets.

“The fuel?”

“Calcium carbide pellets. They react with the water in the reservoir to produce acetylene, a combustible gas.”

The hand sets the jar aside on a nearby bench, snaps shut the metal chute, and then depresses a metal plunger. Inside, a steel striker scratches across flint and sparks ignite the acetylene gas with a dull
whumph
. A translucent mica window pulses with an eerie blue flame.

“And now?”

“Now, it is a matter of moments before we achieve the required steam pressure.”

There is a rising rumble and hiss of water bubbling to a boil. A pressure gauge is set flush into the face of the metal chest plate and now the needle sweeps across the dial as steam pressure builds and peaks, the needle trembling just shy of the red warning zone. Inside the metal box, pistons rise and fall, tiny flywheels spin, and a sound fills the underground space:
wisssshthump … wisssssshthump … wissssssshthump.…

The second figure begins to fumble at the straps holding its mask in place.

“What are you doing!”

“This mask … cannot breathe!”

“Stop! You must not remove it. When the creature awakens it will imprint on the first human face it sees. It must not be yours!”

The masked figure hesitates, relents, drops its hands.

Heated blood begins to pump through cold, inanimate flesh.
Wisssshthump … wisssssshthump … wissssssshthump.…

The gloved hands hurry to refasten the buttons of the ragged shirt, and both masked figures retreat behind the opaque glass.

Suddenly the body tremors. The chest inflates in a deep drawing in of breath. The head lifts on its thick pillar of neck. The crusted eyes startle open. Wide. Staring. Pupils pinpricked. The whites are a sickly bright yellow.

The head strains against the band clamping it in place, whipcord veins in the neck and forehead engorge and throb dangerously, muscles knot and bunch as the mouth opens and a deafening cry rips out.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

The scream finally dwindles when no air remains in the lungs to push it out.

“Why do they always scream?”

“Because their last memory is of the drop. The rope. The terrible pain and the flash of light behind the eyes as the soul is ripped from its mortal frame.”

“So it has no soul?”

“None. It is nothing. It feels nothing. The human spark has fled. What remains is but a puppet of meat and flesh
we
have reanimated. The higher brain functions are the first to die: Memory. Personality. Morality. Only the lower functions remain. The animal drives. It feels no hunger. No pain. No pity. No remorse. It is something for us to train. To mold. Something malleable. Something biddable.”

In the hulking chair, the resurrected corpse begins to stir. The muscles ripple and flex, limbs straining against the metal bonds. The slavering mouth opens and a second howl of rage roars out:
Aaaiiiiieeeeeeaaaaah!

“It is no longer human. Less than a beast. It is a creature. A monster. But it is
our
monster. The mechanical heart pumps four times faster than a human’s. The blood pressure is tripled, giving it enormous strength. Muscles like iron bars. It possesses no more than a splinter of intellect. The immense pressure in the brain is what feeds its terrible anger. Its mind is little more than a retort bubbling with hatred and rage. Now we shall give it something to focus that rage upon.”

The gloved hand reaches toward a magic lantern set on a nearby table and presses a slide in.

A glowing image splashes upon the large screen immediately in front of the restraining chair.

The taller demon fumbles a speaking tube to its mouth. When it speaks the voice passes through tubes into resonating chambers and emerges from gramophone bells set on either side of the chair. Amplified. Booming. The voice of an angry god.

“You are in purgatory. Neither dead nor alive, but in a place where you suffer for the sins committed in life.”

The monster writhes in the restraining chair. Rips a mournful howl.

The second demon leans close and mutters, “Are you sure nothing of the human remains? It sounds … wounded. Like a tortured man in despair.”

“Nothing human remains. It is a machine. A flesh automaton.”

A second slide pushes in to replace the first and the screen burns with the image of a portly gentleman in a fine top hat and suit. He is looking into the camera and smiling a smug, self-satisfied smile.

“This is Tarquin Hogg. Tarquin Hogg is the reason for your death. Tarquin Hogg is the reason your soul is bound in purgatory. You must find Tarquin Hogg. You must destroy him. Smash him. Only then will you be free. Only then will your soul be released from its prison of flesh.”

The thing in the chair begins a growl that ends in a spray of spittle. It thrashes violently, straining against its iron bonds with such force that the massive chair creaks and groans, threatening to tear apart.

One of the demons depresses a lever at the back of the chair with the toe of a polished shoe. The metal bands caging the beast snap open. A gloved hand jerks a lever. At the far end of the cellar, an iron-banded door flings open.

Outside, the night seethes with vaporous gray.

Released, the thing in the chair rises up on the trembling pillars of its legs. The gory head pivots as the waiting darkness draws its yellow-eyed gaze. It takes one lumbering step and then another, jerkily locomoting across the room. Then it clumsies up a short flight of stone steps. A broad shoulder caroms off the doorframe as it stumbles across the threshold and outside. Here it pauses to look up at a sky hidden behind a choking blanket of yellow-green fog. The grizzled head turns this way and that, as if sensing currents of subtle energies crackling in the air. Then the thing that had once been Charlie Higginbotham lumbers away and vanishes into the smoky night.

The gloved hand yanks a lever and the iron door bangs shut, cutting loose a surge of cold air that swirls about the cellar, setting the gas jets ajitter. The demons step from behind the cover of the glass screen.

“It is done.”

“But how can the creature find its way? How can it know where Tarquin Hogg is?”

“It is a thing neither dead nor alive, trapped between this world and the next. It senses the living, wherever they are, and tracks them unerringly. It is untiring. Indefatigable. Once set upon a target it cannot be recalled until its task is finished. It does not know hunger. It does not sense the rain. The cold. It feels no pain. No pity. No remorse. It is unkillable. Tarquin Hogg’s death is irrevocable.”

CHAPTER   12

A WONDERFUL EVENING ENDS HORRIBLY

Conan Doyle and Jean Leckie emerged from the Haymarket Theatre to discover that the fog had grown ponderously dense, so much so that the usher’s torches stained the fog with a seething crimson glare that made the theatergoers waiting for carriages and cabs appear like well-dressed citizens queuing to enter Hell. Conan Doyle had thought ahead to retain the four-wheeler for the entire evening, and now it drew up at the curb and he escorted Miss Leckie toward it, already practicing what he should say as he bid her good night. The coachman dismounted and held the carriage door.