The Dead Assassin: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (34 page)

“No doubt sleeping off an opium stupor!”

The financier, Sir Lionel Ransome, fretted, “We are all fools to follow this man.”

“He serves our purpose…” muttered the judge, and then added darkly, “… for now.”

But the financier’s comment had broken the dam wall of silence and a flood of doubt poured from the committee members.

“He is deranged, clearly.”

“And one we do congress with at our peril.”

“After we seize power, DeVayne must be done away with—swiftly.”

“I agree.”

The police commissioner leaned forward on his elbows and growled, “When this is done, we must wipe the slate clean, so that none of this business can ever be tied back to us.”

The table buzzed with a collective murmur of
hear-hears
.

A scowl wrinkled the old admiral’s face as he hissed at his neighbors, “Ssshhh! Lest you be overheard.”

The police commissioner chuckled fatuously and countered, “Easy, old man, we are quite alone.” He slouched back in his chair, puffed his cigar and blew a dilating smoke ring up toward the shadowy ceiling. “Only the gargoyles can hear us.”

At that moment, the eyes of the gargoyle on the farthest wall went dark, as the face that had been pressed up behind it drew away, the listener having heard more than enough.

Moments later, a door at the end of the hall opened. Rufus DeVayne entered and walked toward his seat at the head of the table. “Good news, gentlemen,” he announced gaily. “Our rally at St. Winifred’s was a resounding success. I have inflamed the unwashed multitude.” He settled into his chair. “And now to the business of this committee meeting. I refer, of course, to the fog. It needs to get worse, gentlemen. Much worse.”

The industrialist came close to apoplexy. “But I am already burning twice the usual amount of coal in my factory furnaces. Are you trying to bankrupt me?”

“Forget the expense,” DeVayne snarled. “You should be burning
three
times the normal amount of coal—no,
four
times. Consider it an investment in your future. The fog is our greatest ally in this endeavor. We are fomenting unrest. Sowing the seeds of chaos. Because of the fog, trains cannot run. Omnibuses are canceled. Carriages abandoned in the streets. Shops must shut early. Commerce shudders to a halt. Most importantly, the fog hampers the police. Even the army cannot move freely. Tomorrow is 13/13. The capital must grind to a standstill beneath a pall of smoke and fog. Then a mob will assemble outside the railings of Buckingham Palace. We have a confederate in the clock tower. At one o’clock Big Ben will strike thirteen. That will be the signal to storm the palace.”

“How many and armed with what?” the old admiral asked.

“A mob of a few hundred,” DeVayne speculated, “armed with knives, clubs, stones, cobbles dug from the road.”

The coal mine owner grew agitated. “Against guardsmen armed with rifles and bayonets? They will be slaughtered in seconds!”

DeVayne laughed. “Oh, I have little doubt of it.”

“What is the point of such a futile effort?” Burke sneered.

“The point, gentlemen, is to provide a cover, a smoke screen, a wall of fog such as you have created by burning coal in your factories morn and night. The mob has no chance of taking the palace, but their presence will allow us to enter unmolested. Yea, they will throw the gates open to me.”

“How so?” the coal magnate asked.

“I will arrive in my carriage, an aristocrat seeking sanctuary. My landau is well known to the guardsmen. After all, who else in London has a carriage drawn by zebras?”

“Say you do manage to slip onto the palace grounds,” the commissioner said with unconcealed skepticism. “What then?”

DeVayne took out the long-barreled derringer and set it on the table before him. It drew the eyes of most of the Fog Committee members, but Burke was not impressed.

“A pop gun? Is that your strategy? You’ll never get close enough to the queen to use it. She’ll be surrounded by armed guards.”

DeVayne’s smile couched both indulgence and threat. “I will not act as assassin. The rear of the carriage will contain the monster, concealed beneath a pile of blankets. Once inside the palace gates, I shall unleash the beast. No matter where the queen hides, no matter how many guards surround her, our assassin will seek her out unerringly. Our monster is now unstoppable, unkillable. The queen and the Prince of Wales will die on that day. With no immediate successor, the nation will descend into chaos and the people will turn to us to save them. Conveniently, I will be on hand, fifth in line for the throne, ready and willing to take the reins of power and return stability to a nation in chaos. My first act as king will be to dissolve Parliament, and then we shall sweep to power, unopposed. The remaining members of the so-called royal family will be rounded up and quietly dispatched. Then, once again, an
English
king will sit upon the
English
throne.”

“And what of us?” the commissioner asked. “I trust you will not forget us once you wear the crown?”

DeVayne laughed. “You gentlemen know my passions. I desire only the trappings of royalty: the crown, the palace, the land. The nation I will leave in your infinitely capable hands. While you gentlemen steer us back on the path of industrial growth and prosperity, I will be busy redecorating the palace and moving in my menagerie. I can see my lions now, frolicking in the fountains and sunning themselves on the palace steps.”

The double doors opened and Dr. Lamb entered with Jedidiah, the toy maker, following close behind. DeVayne acknowledged them with a nod, but by the severity of the doctor’s expression, it was clear something had gone badly wrong. He sought to end the meeting quickly. “Thank you for attending, gentlemen. Our plan proceeds apace. We reconvene tomorrow for the final act.”

The Fog Committee stood up from their seats and filed out of the great hall, muttering and chuntering. DeVayne remained in his seat, smiling confidently. But when the double doors closed on their backs, he jumped up from the table. “What is it?” he demanded. “I can see from your faces you have bad news.”

By way of answer, Jedidiah drew off his scarf to reveal a neck purpled with five finger-sized bruises. “When the monster returned, it attacked me. Luckily, it had been gone for hours. I would have been throttled to death had it not run out of fuel at that very moment.”

The marquess’s face betrayed his shock. “I don’t understand. How—?”

The doctor handed him a small square photograph of a handsome young woman.

“Who is this?”

“It is a photograph of Vicente’s sister. I know, because while he was in Newgate he looked at the photograph a hundred times a day, rereading her last letter and weeping.”

Jedidiah took up the story. “The monster returned with this picture clutched in its hand and only dropped it to choke me.”

DeVayne thought for a moment and realization lit his eyes. “This is Wilde’s doing; and that walrus-faced friend of his. That must mean—”

“They are still alive,” Dr. Lamb said, finishing the thought.

“Impossible!” DeVayne shook his head. “How could they survive the monster?”

“There’s more,” Jedidiah said. “All the tendons in the monster’s left hand had been severed as if by a scalpel. The knifework was precise, and must have been performed by a person with medical knowledge. No doubt Doctor Conan Doyle.”

Dr. Lamb spoke out, “The monster was clearly affected by seeing the photograph of his sister.” He glared at the toy maker and spoke in a voice strained with emotion, “You told me the thing had no soul. That it retained no memory of its former life.”

Jedidiah shook his head dismissively. “A residual memory, that is all. A scrap of recollection. It is a dead thing.”

“I heard it howl. Like a soul in torment!”

“Enough!” DeVayne spat. He turned away and stood tapping the photograph to his lips, deep in thought. “I underestimated our scribbler friends. We cannot afford to make that mistake a second time.”

“So we try again to kill them?”

DeVayne shook his head. “I have a more reliable method. I know Wilde and Conan Doyle and their weaknesses. We will have the monster kidnap their loved ones: the young woman Conan Doyle is having a dalliance with, and one of Wilde’s children. That will guarantee they stay out of the fray until our new regime is established. After which, they and their families can be collected and lawfully executed as enemies of the state.” He looked to the young doctor. “The monster is repaired?”

Lamb nodded. “A few hours’ sewing.”

“Good. Load the creature in the hearse and go collect them. While they are guests in my dungeon they may provide me with a few hours’ diversion.”

CHAPTER   29

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING IN DEADLY EARNEST

As the author of Sherlock Holmes stepped from the train onto the railway platform at Haslemere, the morning chill seeped through his clothes and left him shivering in the brittle dawn light. He thought of Jean Leckie back in London. Would she be safe? Had he run away to leave her to a terrible fate? The train whistled and chuffed away, leaving him a lone and lonely figure on an empty platform, torn between the desire to rush back to the ticket office and buy a return ticket and the need to protect his family. But in the end he turned and walked down the platform to retrieve his tricycle. He faced a desolate ride home.

*   *   *

The drumming snatched Conan Doyle from a horrid dream. He creaked open his eyes to find Kingsley’s windup soldier, an inch from his nose, pounding its drum in a blur of mechanical arms.

“It works, Daddy. You mended it! You mended it!”

His little boy stood at his bedside, showing off his newly repaired clockwork guardsman. Conan Doyle pushed himself up from the pillow with a prolonged groan. The author was an athletic man, used to exerting himself in golf, cycling, cricket, even skiing, but after the previous evening’s exploits, everything hurt. Everything ached. He tottered up from the bed, barely able to pull his arms into a dressing gown. He could only imagine how poor Oscar, who broke a sweat stirring sugar into his tea, was faring.

“Shush with your toy, Kingsley. You’ll awaken the house.”

“Silly Daddy. Everyone is already up.”

Conan Doyle glanced at the clock and was shocked to find it was nearly twelve o’clock. Kingsley was right. He’d slept half the day away.

“There’s a lady in the parlor who says she’s your friend.”

“A—a lady?”

“A pretty lady. She and Mummy are drinking tea.”

Conan Doyle puzzled over what his little boy was talking about. Suddenly the realization hit him. Yanking open the wardrobe door, he began snatching out clothes. A clean shirt. A pair of trousers. A tweed jacket. There was only one pretty woman it could be. He trembled to think what Louise must have been thinking. Worse still, he dreaded to think what Jean must have been suffering.

*   *   *

Wilde was in the dining room of his Tite Street home, cracking the top off a soft-boiled egg with a butter knife (a physical effort that made him wince) when the boys marched in, Cyril banging his drum and Vyvyan blowing his trumpet. The playwright was still dressed in his silk pajamas and dressing gown having only recently staggered from his bed.

“Boys! Boys! Boys!” he remonstrated as they began their third circuit of the breakfast table. “Please, march in another room at a greater remove. Papa is feeling particularly delicate this morning.”

Constance Wilde appeared at the open doorway, her eternal shadow, Robert Sheridan, lurking behind. Both wore hats and coats and were muffled up to go outside.

“Oscar!” Constance exclaimed, surprised to see him. “You did not spend the night at your club, after all?”

It was a remark he was expected to rise to, but Wilde felt as buoyant as an iron skillet. Rising was the last thing he was going to do. “Last evening I had a swimming lesson followed by a pleasure cruise down the Thames. I am still somewhat waterlogged.”

His wife’s expression betrayed her puzzlement, but she responded with an ironic laugh and said, “Robert and I are taking the boys to the park.”

“Excellent,” Wilde replied. “I suggest Hyde Park or St. James’s park.”

“Hyde Park? But that’s miles away.”

“Yes,” Wilde said. “Far out of earshot, I would wager.”

As he lifted his teacup, Constance noticed his bruised and gashed knuckles. “Oscar! Whatever happened to your hands? You look as if you’ve been fighting.”

Wilde paused a moment in sipping his tea and said, “My new ing
é
nue refuses to learn her lines. I’m afraid it came down to fisticuffs.”

A stunned look swept Sheridan’s face, but Constance merely laughed and said, “He is joking, Robert. One of the many joys of being married to Oscar is that I get to enjoy the Wildean wit all day long.”

Constance and Sheridan left Wilde to his breakfast and went about the chore of squeezing two wriggling boys into winter woolens. The maid entered the breakfast room bearing the newspaper and the morning’s correspondence on a silver tray. The Irish wit’s digestion was not helped when he snatched up the paper and read the headline: “Anarchists to March upon London!”

The article was a catch-your-breath stream of hysteria detailing a planned mass march of socialists and their sympathizers scheduled to take place the very next day. He read as far as the second paragraph before tossing the paper down. He knew far more than the scattershot speculation of the
Times
reporter. A cream-yellow envelope caught his attention. It was addressed to him with no return address. When he slashed it open with a letter knife, a small photograph fluttered out and landed faceup on the table. It was the crinkled photograph of Vicente’s sister. Inside the envelope, he found a note scribbled in a crazed hand:

I cannot fathom how you are still alive. I warned you to stay away. Now I must make you unhappy.

The note was written in red ink and scrawled with a pentagram.

Wilde’s stomach churned with queasy dread. The note did not require a signature: he knew DeVayne’s mark when he saw it.