The Dead Assassin: The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (39 page)

“Evidently Ozymandius lied,” Wilde muttered. “His brother Solomon clearly did not die that day.”

Pinioned in the restraining chair was the corpse of the Italian valet, hanging slack and lifeless in its cage of iron bands. DeVayne left his seat and strode over to join them.

“I am the one who brought these two geniuses together. As I once said to you, Mister Wilde, in the new regime men such as these will be lauded as gods. Unfortunately, neither you nor Mister Doyle will live to see that day.” He turned to the engineer. “Solomon, I believe our friends need a demonstration of our improved assassin.”

DeVayne eyed both of them cruelly. “You were lucky to escape the first time. We discovered your little trick with the photograph. But this time I will ensure that the creature fully imprints upon you both. I shall tell it you murdered Vicente’s sister. The animal drives of hatred and rage are far stronger than the weak human notions of love and sentiment, as you will discover when the monster’s hand plunges through your ribcage and rips out your heart.” He nodded at Solomon. “Begin the resurrection.”

“One question, Solomon,” Conan Doyle called out. “What do you hope to gain by all this death and destruction? Will killing the queen somehow bring your family back?”

The gray-haired man in the black stovepipe regarded Conan Doyle a moment and sneered with derision. “The queen, sir? Shall I tell about our beloved monarch? I created a war-winning weapon: a guided torpedo that could destroy a warship from a mile away. The nose of the torpedo was fitted with a glass window. Inside was a pigeon trained to recognize the silhouette of a warship and steer toward it by pecking at metal paddles. But on the day of the demonstration, some fool released a flock of doves to welcome the queen. The pigeon saw the shadow of the doves on the surface of the water. Instinct took over from training and the pigeon turned to follow the flock. Dozens were killed. I saw my wife and beloved child go down before my eyes.” Solomon Arkwright’s chin quivered; his eyes filled with hot tears that melted before a glare of burning hatred. “But you know what the irony is?” He shook his head bitterly. “The accident fnished us as weapon makers. But not because of the people killed. Not because of the death of my wife and child. But because of the pigeon. The great animal lover Victoria was horrified that a weapon designed to save countless lives of British seamen required the sacrifice of a single bird. And so we were stricken from the list of weapons suppliers.”

Conan Doyle briefly wondered what was happening in the entrance hall and whether the servants had all fled the house. He decided to play for time. “Solomon,” he called out. “We have met your brother. We know what happened those many years ago. You suffered a terrible loss. But is what you are doing true to the memory of your loved ones?”

The engineer looked at Conan Doyle as if he were stupid. “Everything I do is for my family. I will revive their bodies … not just their memory.” Solomon’s head shook with a violent tremor.

Conan Doyle suddenly remembered the photograph of the Fog Committee. He had surmised that the figure in the stovepipe hat had deliberately turned his head to blur his own image. Now he understood the truth: it was the nervous tic the man had no doubt been left with after that tragic day when he saw his wife and child die before his eyes. Solomon Arkwright was a deeply traumatized man, but he might yet be reasoned with. “We have seen the bodies of your wife and son. They have deteriorated too far be revivified, no matter how clever your heart pump is.”

“The marquess’s magic will take up where our science leaves off.” Solomon’s words were raveled with desperation. “He has given me his solemn oath that we shall walk together again in this life.”

“Walk together? What, like that thing?” Wilde said, pointing to the dead man in the chair. “You will revive them as shambling monsters?”

“Shut up!” Solomon bellowed. “Shut up!”

The engineer spread open the monster’s shirt, revealing the brassy metal box. His fingers found and depressed the recessed plunger, which scratched a inner striker plate and ignited the carbide fuel. Soon they could hear the ascending hiss of water coming to a boil.

DeVayne and his two cronies stepped back behind the restraining chair, out of the monster’s field of view. The heart pump’s telltale sound filled the hall:
wisssshthump … wisssssshthump … wissssssshthump …

Within minutes, the corpse began to quiver as hot blood pumped through cold flesh, dormant nerve endings fired, and limbs twitched. Then the creature stirred. It drew in a ragged breath and released a plume of steam.

DeVayne smiled as he watched. “Solomon has increased the steam engine’s output, raising the blood pressure to six times that of a normal human, bestowing the creature with unstoppable power.”

As the tissues engorged with blood, the thing in the chair seemed to inflate. Huge veins plumped on the face and neck and the skin darkened to the color of a sanguine bruise. Then, with a blood-chilling scream, the grizzled head rose up and the yellow eyes startled open.

The marquess leaned close to the gruesome head and purred into its ear: “The men you see before you are the cause of your suffering. They murdered your sister. Your soul will never know peace while they live. You must destroy Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle. Tear off their arms. Smash them. Peel the flesh from their bones. Crush and rend them utterly. Only then will you know peace. Only then will you be released from this prison of corrupt and stinking flesh you now inhabit.”

The monster began to writhe violently in the chair, an engine fueled by hatred. One iron band restraining an arm broke with a loud snap, and then another. The chair creaked and groaned as the monster rose to its feet, snapping the heavy timbers as if they were matchsticks. The monster stood erect, pausing a moment as if gathering momentum, the yellow eyes fixing upon the two friends, and then took a lunging step forward.

“Kill them!” DeVayne urged. “Kill! Kill! Ki—”

KAA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

His words were drowned by a thunderous explosion that blew in the doors and snuffed out the gaslights. Suits of armor toppled and crashed. A pall of dust fell from the rafters and mixed with the smoke and steam swirling in through the doorway to form a blinding fog. When the pall of dust and smoke finally cleared, Conan Doyle and Wilde had vanished.

So had the monster.

Dr. Lamb looked terror-struck. “What was that explosion?”

A masked servant ran by the doorway.

“Wait!” DeVayne shouted, but the servant had already vanished.

“What do we do now?” Solomon asked. “The two meddlers have escaped and the house is on fire.”

DeVayne thought a moment and said, “We must proceed with our plan. Wilde and his friend are as good as dead. The monster will track them unerringly.” He turned to Solomon. “You must find the creature and bring him back.” He handed over Conan Doyle’s revolver. “In the unlikely event he hasn’t already killed them, use this and make sure they’re dead. The doctor and I will be waiting in my landau. We cannot delay. We must be inside the gates of Buckingham Palace before Big Ben strikes thirteen.”

Meanwhile Conan Doyle and Wilde were running pell-mell through the hallways. “I told you to shut that steam thing down, Arthur.”

“Yes. It worked rather better than I’d hoped.” But in the next instant he was struck by a dread realization. “We must find the dungeon where Miss Leckie and Vyvyan are being held, before the fire becomes a conflagration!”

They paused at the foot of the grand staircase.

“Only stairs going up,” Conan Doyle said. “None going down.”

“This is a mock Tudor manor. It only has two floors.”

“Then where would the dungeon be?”

Wilde thought a moment and said, “When we were in his rooms, DeVayne said his dungeon was nearby.”

“Where are his rooms?”

“Somewhere on the upper floor. I’m not sure exactly.”

From down the smoky corridor came a dreadfully familiar sound:
wisssssshthump … wisssssshthump.…
Through the swirling smoke, they glimpsed the monster, stumping toward them.”

“Quickly, Arthur, up the stairs!”

The two friends vaulted up the staircase with Wilde leading the way. They turned right and hurried along the corridor.

“Which room?”

“Alas, I cannot recall.”

“So many rooms. So many doors. How shall we ever find them?”

“Perhaps they are somewhere near. Close enough to hear us if we shout.”

Both men began to shout aloud: “JEAN! VYVYAN. JEAN! VYVYAN!”

Conan Doyle paused to look behind. Smoke was chimneying up the staircase and spreading along the upper landing. The smoke swirled and the monster stepped out of it and slouched after them.

“The creature’s following us.”

They loped on, shouting at the top of their lungs. “VYVYAN! JEAN!”

Wilde grabbed Conan Doyle’s arm and dragged him to a standstill.

“What?”

“I hear singing,” Wilde said. He looked at Conan Doyle with a mystified expression. “It sounds like … an aria?”

Conan Doyle instantly recognized the singer. “It’s Jean. She is a classically trained mezzo-soprano. That’s her singing.”

“How apropos. I suppose, if I must die, at least I shall have a suitably operatic death. Here I am running through a burning manor pursued by a raging monster. And all to the accompaniment of an aria. Even Wagner could not stage such a drama.”

They followed Jean Leckie’s soaring voice to a large set of double doors and crashed through them.

“These are his rooms!” Wilde said. He dashed about, searching amongst the elaborate furniture and the four-poster bed; however, Vyvyan and Jean Leckie were nowhere to be seen. Conan Doyle slammed the bedroom doors shut and bolted them.

“I’m afraid that won’t keep it out for long.”

“Hardly.”

“Jean!” Conan Doyle shouted. “Keep singing.”

The silvery aria started up again.

Wilde pointed. “It’s coming from the wall, behind the print.”

He pointed to the print DeVayne had so lovingly described in the bookshop. Conan Doyle examined it and speculated, “It must conceal a door.”

“Then there must be a catch or handle somewhere,” Wilde said, hands exploring the edges of the frame.

“Don’t bother!” Conan Doyle pulled the small silver penknife from his pocket, swung out the sharp blade, and slashed through the canvas in a giant X pattern. He and Wilde tore loose the flapping canvas to reveal a dungeon door, massive and heavy, bound together with iron straps and dozens of black rivets. Wilde grabbed the black iron ring and yanked, but to no avail.

“Damnation! It’s locked. We must batter it down.”

“With what?”

Wisssshthump … wisssssshthump … wisssssshthump …

The double doors suddenly burst inward from a blow. The stench of decaying flesh preceded the monster into the room. It paused a moment to fix them both with its ghastly, yellow-eyed stare.

Conan Doyle grabbed the statue of a small bronze satyr from a nearby table and brandished it like a club. But to his surprise, Wilde pushed him aside and stepped toward the monster. He dropped to his knees before it and clasped both hands together in a gesture of supplication. The beast stumbled toward him and raised a clublike arm, coiled to smash. But then Wilde addressed it in fluent Italian, speaking in an impassioned voice, smiting his own chest from time to time. The beast stood frozen. It seemed to be listening, its facial muscles rippling with an inner struggle as the last fragments of Vicente’s humanity warred with the resurrected monster he had been fashioned to be. Wilde finally finished and the monster looked down upon him, as if unsure what to do.

“What did you say to it?”

“I asked him to save my little boy. I implored him in the name of his sister and all the loved ones in Italy he will never see again.”

Suddenly, the monster lowered its arm. It looked from Wilde to the door and back. And then the face tightened into a snarling grimace; a rising growl roared from the lungs. Wilde reared back, anticipating a deathblow. But instead the creature shambled forward and struck the door a resounding blow. The great door shook, but held. Another blow and another. An iron strap tore loose and clanged to the ground. More blows. The wood cracked and split in places. The monster backed away and then charged the door, smashing into it with such force that the hinges tore loose from the frame and the door toppled inward. The monster backed away and Conan Doyle and Wilde rushed into the chamber.

The room inside resembled the dungeon in the print, although the cell was faux-painted plaster, not stone. Torture devices hung from the walls. Gaslights disguised as torches illuminated the windowless space.

Jean Leckie sat on a simple straw pallet in the corner, cradling Wilde’s boy in her lap. And now both cried out in relief.

“Papa!” Vyvyan croaked in a dry voice.

“My beloved child!” Wilde cried, scooping up his son and hugging him to his chest.

“Papa…”

“Yes, Papa came to get you. All the monsters in the universe could not have prevented it.”

Conan Doyle took Jean Leckie by the hands and drew her to her feet. Her lips trembled as she fought to control her churning emotions. Her eyes sparkled with tears. Conan Doyle drew her into his arms and they shared a long, soul-quaking embrace. Suddenly remembering the monster, he flung about to look. But the bedroom was empty. The creature had gone.

As the four stumbled back down the long hall to the grand staircase, the smoke was chokingly thick.

“Shall we never be free of this blasted fog in one form or another?” Wilde complained. They hurried down the staircase to the ground floor where dense smoke swirled. By now fire had climbed up the fine paneling and flames were licking across the ceiling, leaping from room to room.

“Quickly!” Conan Doyle urged. “We must reach the entrance hall before the fire cuts off our only exit.”

But as they ran along the hallway past the grand hall, they found their way blocked by a solitary figure in a stovepipe hat.

Solomon Arkwright.

He brandished the Webley revolver, threatening them. “You and Wilde may save yourselves, but the young lady and the boy must remain.”