The Dead Assassin: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (21 page)

“I did not make it. It is not one of mine. Now good day to you
gentlemen
.”

“What about your brother?” Wilde spoke up for the first time. “The chap in the photo with you. Your partnership is obviously dissolved, as evidenced by the statue you had amended. Could your brother not have fashioned it?”

“My brother, sir, is dead.”

“Dead?” Conan Doyle echoed.

The industrialist seemed to go into a trance, his glassy stare fixed on something from long ago in the past. “An accident. Ten years ago. We made weapons back then: machine guns, cannons, bombs. My brother had an idea for a revolutionary new weapon: a steam torpedo. But no ordinary torpedo—a guided torpedo. A device possessed of a degree of autonomy. It was meant to be a war-winner—an unstoppable weapon that would seek out and destroy enemy ships from a great distance. We thought we had perfected it, but…” His voice shriveled and he shook his head scornfully. The engineer turned his back on them and stared fixedly at the framed portrait on the wall. “It worked flawlessly in tests. But on the day of the demonstration, in front of the queen, the admiralty, and all the bloody world, it went terribly wrong. The torpedo missed the target, ran ashore, and crashed into the reviewing stand.” He shook his head at the painful memory. “Dozens were killed … including my brother’s wife and son.”

“Your brother was also killed in the blast?” Wilde asked.

Arkwright hesitated a long moment before answering, “My brother, Solomon, also died that day.”

Conan Doyle pondered a bit and then calmly asked, “Do you mean he literally died, or that he died to you?”

The engineer drew a breath; his mouth opened, ready to answer, but then he caught himself and the iron returned to his voice. “Who are you to question me? Who the bloody hell are you two?”

“People interested in thwarting an assassination plot which I believe you are somehow involved with … however tangentially.”

The engineer’s nostrils flared; his lips compressed to a thin line. When he spoke, his voice shook with anger. “Get out. Bloody well get out of my factory.” He stalked around the desk and Conan Doyle’s heart quickened as it seemed Arkwright was about to physically attack them.

But instead he stooped over and bellowed in their faces. “GET OUT!”

*   *   *

“The grandly named Ozymandias need not fear assassination,” Wilde said. “The man is likely to succumb to a fit of dyspepsia at any moment.”

The two were once again in the hired hackney trundling back toward London. Conan Doyle toyed with the shiny gear in his hands. “Did you happen to see the object on his desk? When we entered the room, he hurriedly threw a cloth over it, but I managed to catch a glimpse. Did you?”

Wilde shook his head. “I saw the cloth and the rough outline of something beneath it. What was beneath it?”

“I cannot be certain, but it looked to me like a mechanical arm.”

Wilde furrowed his brow. “You mean, a mechanical human arm?”

“Yes, a skeletal armature made of shiny metal. It looked as though it articulated in precisely the same manner a human arm would.” He raised his own arm and flexed it to demonstrate. “The shoulder, the elbow, the wrist, and the fingers, down to the individual phalanges—all articulated.”

“Quite a departure for Mister Arkwright, who seems to specialize in all things enormous and loud: giant steam engines, locomotives, ships. Perhaps he is pursuing a new field of endeavor.”

“Having recently seen what I believe to be a mechanical heart, I find it an unsettling coincidence.”

“There’s that word again: coincidence.”

“Yes,” Conan Doyle agreed. He paused to remove his pocket watch and held it up to the light to check the time. Although it was scarcely three, the skies were darkening ominously.

The two fell silent. Contemplative.

Ahead, the road dipped in a long, downhill sweep of cobblestones. On the distant skyline hung the brooding silhouette of London. Monochrome. Colorless. A city formed of soot and shadow wrapped in a tattered gray shroud of clouds. From this elevated perspective, they looked out over housetops and chimney pots, factory chimneys, steamships churning the Thames and fiery locomotives chasing along steely rails, all of them releasing black plumes that rose into the hazy skies and were soon drawn up into carbonaceous clouds so bloated with soot and smoke they dragged their furry bellies across the church spires, unable to rise any higher.

“Good Lord, Arthur,” Wilde breathed as the two friends observed the dark spectacle, “what are we doing to the world?”

And then, as sooty drops lashed the cab windows, the city melted and ran, one darkness bleeding into another, a charcoal sketch left out in the rain.

CHAPTER   17

A DROWNED OPHELIA

The Mutoscope flutters and goes dark. The toy maker draws his face away, a hand clamped to his eyes. His shoulders heave. Noiseless sobs rack his body. He fights to compose himself. Abruptly, driven by a sudden resolve, he abandons the Mutoscope and strides across the empty toy store to the open trapdoor. His feet stomp down the bare wooden steps and he crosses the cellar workshop to the workbench set against the bare brick wall. He pulls the hidden handle and the door to an adjacent cellar springs open.

He takes a lantern from its hook and enters the space, passing the hulking restraining chair, and moves to a door at the far end of the space. He keys the lock and steps into a smaller room where his breath fogs the air. In previous times this was a larder for keeping meat; the thick walls are built from massive stones rendered smooth to hold in the chill. Large blocks of river ice sit stacked beneath a scattering of straw, and the flagstones underfoot shine wet from melt water. Dominating the center of the room are two tanks, one large, one small, like metal coffins clamped shut with iron straps.

He moves to the larger tank, unfastens the metal straps, and flings open the lid. The tank is filled to the brim with a glass-clear liquid that could be mistaken for water were it not for the astringent smell of alcohol rising from it. He lofts the lantern and stares rapturously into the depths. The naked body of a young woman hangs suspended. Her eyes are closed as though lost in her dreams, and in the subtle eddies of the turbid liquid, her long blond hair writhes like underwater weed.

“My beloved,” he whispers in words that fog the air.

He plunges an arm into the liquid. It is breathtakingly cold, but before his hand goes numb and loses all feeling, his searching fingers catch and cradle the slender curve of a neck. He carefully lifts and the face of a drowned angel surfaces from the liquid, the plastered hair streaming, the skin marble white and etched with a tracery of fine blue veins. As he draws the face closer, an arm floats up and a hand breaks the surface, revealing torn flesh and the chewed-off stubs of missing fingers.

“Our long years of separation are almost over. Soon, we will be reunited with our child, and we will walk together in the light.”

And then he leans close and places a tender kiss upon the stiff, gelid lips.

CHAPTER   18

INVITATION TO AN EXECUTION

“Oscar! Oscar! Awaken at once!” A strong hand gripped Wilde’s shoulder, shaking him awake. He reluctantly surfaced from sleep to find himself in his room in the Albemarle. Conan Doyle was standing over him, fully dressed in hat and coat, having just cabbed over from his own gentlemen’s club, the Athenaeum.

“Dash it all!” Wilde moaned. “Why did you awaken me? I had just discovered a secret closet within my house that I did not know existed. The closet was filled with shoes. Thousands of pairs of shoes. And when I tried them on, they all fit perfectly. It was the most profoundly moving experience. It was so vivid.” He sniffed the air. “I swear I still have the aroma of butter-soft leather in my nostrils. Have you ever in your life had such a dream?”

“We all have those dreams, Oscar. Now, I am sorry to awaken you so early, but I have shocking news.”

“News in any way related to footwear?”

“I’m afraid not.” Conan Doyle flourished the morning paper, opened it to the front page, and thrust it under Wilde’s nose. The banner headline read: “Murderer of Lord Howell to Hang!”

The Irish playwright’s mouth fell open. “How is that possible? Vicente was arrested but four nights ago!”

Conan Doyle was equally flummoxed. “Arrest, trial, and execution in a handful of days? The British judicial system has never in its history worked with such expediency.”

The Irishman’s eyes raced across lines of type, reading. “He’s to be hanged at Newgate on Wednesday.” Then realization stunned his eyes wide. “But … that’s today!”

“Precisely.”

“Tried and found guilty of treason by a special sitting,” Wilde read aloud, poring over the words. “In less than a week? Such an excess of haste seems impolitic, even in the case of treason.”

“I greatly suspect this execution has been rushed in order to silence Vicente before he can speak to anyone.” He snatched the paper back. “We must endeavor to see this man, Oscar. Talk to him. Learn the truth. Before his voice is forever extinguished.”

Wilde’s expression betrayed a lack of enthusiasm. “But, Arthur, you know how executions are. Newgate will be swarmed by every scamp, scallywag, ne’er-do-well, pimp, whore, prig, and pie monger, not to mention the bad, the mad, the insane, and the morbidly curious. We shan’t be able to even get within gawking distance.”

“Our fame may prove a key to unlock Newgate.” He tossed the paper aside. “Come, Oscar. Get dressed. We must leave without delay.”

Wilde stared up at him, flabbergasted. “Now? Just like that? I shall require at least an hour to select a suitable wardrobe. Come to think, what does one wear to an execution? Black? A tad clich
é
. And rather morbid given what is already likely to prove a morose occasion.”

Conan Doyle crossed to the armoire, snatched it open, grabbed a shirt at random and threw it at Wilde, who caught it and paused, struck by the color. “Burgundy? Really?” He laughed. “Rather a bold choice, don’t you think? Bravo, Arthur. Burgundy: a color that is rich and yet appropriately circumspect.” He held the shirt beneath his chin for Conan Doyle’s approval. “What do you think, Arthur? This shirt with an ivory cravat? Please, I want you to be brutally honest.”

“Being brutally honest, we need to leave now. Immediately. This instant. Newgate executes its prisoners on the stroke of nine and it is nearly eight o’clock.”

“B-but, Arthur,” Wilde sputtered. “Does a gentleman have time to wash? To shave? To break a crust? I am quite famished.”

Conan Doyle snatched the silver hip flask from the bedside table and pressed it into Wilde’s hands. “Here’s your breakfast. Now be a good chap and drink it down quickly. The game’s af—”

“Cease!” Wilde cried out, flinging up a restraining hand. “Please do not utter that phrase and I promise I shall hurry and never complain once.”

*   *   *

Wilde kept his promise and did not utter a single complaint during the carriage ride to Newgate Prison. Instead, he uttered many complaints—about the lingering fog, about the traffic, about the potholed road, about the noisome air—in an ongoing litany until the long, squat, ominous hulk of Newgate Prison finally hove into view through the carriage windows.

“Ugh,” he exclaimed upon seeing the stony shoulders of the prison (with the sepulchral dome of St. Paul’s hovering weightless above like a memento mori). “Newgate: a prime example of
Architecture Terrible,
a style so repulsive it proclaims its dread function to all who see it. Just looking upon its hideous proportions is like a slap of reprimand.”

Even though all executions were now carried on within the walls of Newgate, out of sight of gawkers, a mob of hundreds swarmed beneath the prison’s grim fa
ç
ade: Fleet Street hacks, penny-a-line pamphleteers, firebrand priests sermonizing against sin, false beggars, shoeless urchins with filthy faces, reeling drunkards puking on their own shoes. And, of course, despite being literally in the shadow of the most feared symbol of the law’s displeasure, the criminal classes, to whom the event wielded an attraction the way a magnet draws iron. And so dipsmen worked the crowd, brazenly rifling pockets while streetwalkers with rouged faces and overspilling bodices buffed men’s eyes with their breasts, and sharp-dressed swells arm-in-arm with peach-cheeked courtesans and a faceless horde of thrill-seeking loiterers and ne’er-do-wells from all levels of society, each and every one summoned by the titillating spectacle of the suffering and death of a fellow human being.

The carriage trundled along Newgate Street until forced to a standstill by the press of bodies. Conan Doyle flung open the door and he and Wilde dropped from the carriage into the greasy jostle of the crowd. The two friends threaded a meandering path through the morbid carnival until they fetched up outside the prison’s infamous black gates. Set within the hulking outer gate was a smaller, human-sized door. Behind a sliding lattice grille lurked a uniformed prison officer with a face like a clenched fist, snarling at every supplicant who wheedled to gain entry. Conan Doyle shouldered past them all and handed in a note. “This is for your warden. Tell him it is from Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories.”

The guard snatched the paper and glared at it with a doubting scowl. He eyeballed Conan Doyle and Wilde up and down, and then banged the grille shut without speaking a word.

“That looked far from promising,” Wilde observed.

“I concur.”

“Although if I hired him to be my footman, I should seldom be bothered by creditors.”

After a short wait, they heard the clunk of a heavy iron bolt being shot and the door-within-the-door swung open. The same surly guard beckoned them with a get-yer-arses-in-here wave. Wilde and Conan Doyle stepped through Newgate’s infamous portal to a dread realm devoted to misery, suffering, and death. Without speaking a word, the grim-faced guard marched them along an echoing stone corridor to where a man in a gray suit with graying hair stood waiting. His face contained no glimmer of emotion, although the depth and severity of his frown lines suggested that he was a man with little practice in smiling.