The Lamplighter (25 page)

She glanced at Canavan, as though to ask how he could possibly allow this terrible accusation to go unchallenged.

“A lady who wants desperately to bring an end to the bloodshed…and who is appealing to be hypnotized so that the past can be uncaged and the parrots set free.”

She turned her watery eyes on McKnight, her lips trembling. “You…you accuse me of
murder
?” she asked hoarsely.

Canavan said from the side, “We accuse you of nothing, Evelyn.”

“Of nothing but a singularly powerful imagination,” McKnight clarified.

But to Evelyn it seemed that this was even worse. “You're
lying,
” she said, with surprising vehemence.

McKnight was persistent. “Would it surprise you to learn, Evelyn, that I have been in contact with a former inmate of your orphanage? A fine young lass, now married to one of the University's librarians. She remembers you as a headstrong little girl who frequently led the other girls on nonsensical flights of the imagination. She—”

“Who is this?” Evelyn had clenched her fists.

“Her name is not important, Evelyn. She—”

“Who? Tell me who.”

“She particularly remembers what she called the Incident of the Chalk. Apparently you had rendered a majestic, dragonlike creature on the wall of—”

“You lie! This person does not exist!”

“She is as real as I am.”

“She does not exist! Tell me her name!”

“I cannot tell you her name.”

“Because you think that I will kill her? Because you think that I will strike her down in my dreams, is that it?”

“On the contrary, Evelyn. The lass I speak of has done you no harm. Whereas the men who have died must have wrought very serious damage on your imag—”

But she did not allow him to repeat the forbidden word.

“Why do you hurt me?” she cried abruptly, springing to her feet, unsettling the table and overturning the bottle of port. “Why do you persecute me?”

“Evelyn—”

“What do you mean to do to me!” she cried as disturbed smoke waved and twisted around her.
“Do you think that you are…are…”

“Are what, Evelyn?” McKnight asked earnestly.

But sensing the sudden attention of nearby patrons, Evelyn could stand it no more. Tears erupted from her eyes and she reddened and wavered and, before Canavan could reach her, spun around and bolted for the exit, weaving and ducking through the crowd and hurdling puddles of gin.

Canavan shot one reproving glance at the Professor and promptly took off after her. The smoke slowly settled.

McKnight sat alone as chatter and song, briefly repelled, flooded back in to reclaim the empty space. He sighed, mopped up the spilled port, emptied his pipe, gathered up his cane and the
Rituale Romanum,
and went to the counter to pay.

Awaiting his turn, he reflected that the evening had run very much as he had expected but for the multiplying indications of Canavan's deepening affection for the lass, which of course were linked inextricably to his own uncompromising manner. As far as the investigation went this was not essentially a hindrance, and might indeed prove useful in orchestrating another meeting. But he was worried about the welfare of his friend, as he might worry about any friend who had taken leave of his senses. In Evelyn the Irishman no doubt saw an invitation to unlock his considerable reservoirs of pity, and a cross he could happily bear. In Canavan's bleached eyes and considerate words, Evelyn in turn probably saw the incarnation of all her yearnings. But rather than finding a correcting balance there, McKnight perceived only peril.

On his way out of the place he overheard some revelers, deep in some musty corner, engaged in a spirited performance of the latest pantomime song from the Theatre Royal.

Leaning on his cane, the Professor waited outside in the cold and the rising mist until Canavan returned, breathless and steaming, to his side.

“She's back in her room. And won't be seen. I think I heard her sobbing.”

“She will recover swiftly,” McKnight assured him, setting off at once, “and summon us again.”

“This is a very dangerous business.”

“There are always dangers.”

“And I'm not certain you know her well enough—I mean know her
heart
—to be making such drastic diagnoses.”

“A surgeon on the battlefield has little time for poetry.”

They entered the largely deserted Grassmarket with mist gathering at their heels.

“There are dangers to others,” Canavan argued, “if her imagination is as powerful as you say. The more you stir her up, the more vengeful she could become.”

“There is little evidence of that. There have been no murders since our first meeting.”

“And what of yourself, then? If you move too close to the devil you speak of, isn't it likely he might rear up and smite you with his claw?”

“She does not feel that level of animosity toward me.”

“She's crying now, and is quite probably resentful.”

“She will not carry that resentment into her dreams.”

“And this,” Canavan noted, “is exactly the place where the shortcoming of your theory is exposed. Because the devil you speak of is not a product of her dreams. People have seen him while Evelyn was wide awake. You must have heard of the monstrous shape seen in the night streets?”

“Mass delusion invoked by a climate of fear.”

“Aye? And how then do you dismiss my own report? For I've seen the beast as well.” And when McKnight frowned derisively: “Aye—last night, from the George IV Bridge. I saw the creature, and I assure you it was no dream.”

McKnight sighed. “You saw the creature directly, I suppose? In all its glory?”

“I glimpsed it,” Canavan admitted, “as it was turning a corner. But there was no question of what I saw.”

“It was an illusion,” McKnight insisted as they passed the Corn Exchange.

“No, it was
fundamentally real,
” Canavan said. “I had just met Evelyn, and I was speaking to her when we both saw it.”

McKnight blinked. “Oh, you were with Evelyn, you say?”

“Aye.”

“You claim you were with her and she was wide awake?”

“And she herself referred to the beast as the lamplighter.”

McKnight snorted. “And you did not see fit to mention this earlier?”

“I was biding my time. In her interests alone.”

“This is very convenient.”

“I stand by my claim.”

McKnight thought about it and shook his head. “But it's preposterous, don't you see? You claim you saw the beast while Evelyn was fully conscious?”

“I did.”

“And yet we already know that the beast walks only in her dreams.”

“I know what I saw,” Canavan said. “And I'm surprised that you of all people would call anything preposterous.”

McKnight actually stopped in his tracks, close to the site of former executions. “You yourself were dreaming,” he decided. “That's the explanation.”

“I assure you I was very much awake.”

“Then the dream was just very vivid.”

“It was no dream,” Canavan countered.

“The devil cannot exist outside her dreams.”

“His impact certainly has.”

There was a distant scream of terror.

“No.” McKnight glanced back into the mist-flooded Grassmarket. “The metaphysics are complex, true…”

“I doubt the devil obeys the rules of your metaphysics.”

“But don't you see?” McKnight said as they distractedly heard another squeal. “To accept what you say would be to overturn all that I have been attempting to establish. It would throw the whole world into disorder.”

“A world you yourself have created,” Canavan reminded him, “and jacketed with your own expectations.”

“No…” McKnight shook his head and decided to risk chastising his friend. “You must be wary, in your current condition, lest your thoughts become muddled.”

“And what's my current condition?”

McKnight exhaled. “I have no wish to offend you,” he said, “and it is assuredly none of my business. However, I cannot help but feel that—”

But he did not get a chance to finish, because both men heard it simultaneously: a dissonant blare like the seventh trumpet of Revelation.

In those last moments McKnight experienced an odd sense of culpability, as though he had summoned the creature with the incantation of his own skepticism. He turned in unison with Canavan and looked up at the blossoming clouds of mist, rooted in place, feeling curiously insignificant and listening helplessly as the accumulating sounds—a monstrous huffing, the rattle of hooves like a runaway draft horse, and an immense rustle of silk and leather—echoed around the facades of the square and advanced upon them with an onrush of displaced air and the heat of a hellish breath.

I have challenged the Beast,
McKnight thought fatalistically,
and he has come to claim me.

Then the mist rolled back like proscenium curtains and, with time to glimpse a single apocalyptic figure bearing down upon them, Canavan lunged forward to push his friend to safety.

But the Beast did not attack the two men; did not even appear to notice them. It surged past in a blur, shrouded and incompletely glimpsed, and headed urgently for its lair, dragging behind it great waves of fog, embers, heated air, and slaughterhouse stench. Left in a vacuum, without the chance for a single heartbeat or inhalation, McKnight and Canavan watched in astonishment as it hunched and hobbled past the Bow Foot Well and descended without hesitation into the Cowgate.

They spared just enough time to glance at one another blankly—resignation from McKnight, who did not even stop to retrieve his fallen cane—and then they tore themselves out of stultification and launched into pursuit.

Other onlookers had recoiled or been bowled over, the Beast's path marked in gasps and awestruck faces. At the foot of the slum the Irishman paused, with the Professor bringing up the rear, and watched as the great dragon trundled down the slope, cleaving the darkness and fusty air, bundling aside skinners and match sellers, ruffling the flames of open fires in a tide of squeals and sucked breaths. Trailing the night, the air, the very frontiers of credibility, it lurched under the arch of the George IV Bridge and like some oversize insect scuttled into a fissure-sized wynd.

Canavan pounded down the greasy cobbles and at the intersection saw the Beast scrunching and sliding down the narrow alley. McKnight joined him, breathing raggedly, and both men watched the ungodly spectacle in fascination, the creature, some twenty yards away, bowing and contorting itself into a dark orifice in the wall.