The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (19 page)

Nemo's face held a storm of fury and vengeance, but he could do nothing about
the situation. The small craft was unreachable from where they stood. Quatermain
pressed closer to him.

"But… what is that thing?" Sawyer asked. "You've sure got a lot tricks up
your sleeve, Captain."

"It is my exploration pod," Nemo said. "I call it a nautiloid."

Then, its propellers churning, the smaller craft spun around in the canal,
and they could see the suave man sitting at its controls. He locked eyes with
the League members who were staring back at him, and raised a hand to them in
scornful dismissal.

"Dorian," Mina said. "Why—?"

But Gray didn't seem interested in her at all. He looked back at them coldly
as the nautiloid retreated down the narrow channel. Nemo shouted for all his
crewmen, but the
Nautilus
was not in any condition to depart.

As the nautiloid continued to withdraw down the canal, two men dashed down
the narrow streets to intercept it. Quatermain saw them, recognized them, and
could barely contain his own anger. M, still wearing his Fantom clothes, and his
lieutenant Dante jumped from a crumbling bridge over the widening waterway and
dropped onto the smaller vessel. Dorian Gray opened an upper hatch, and the
other two villains climbed into the safety of the vessel.

Quatermain clenched his fists. "Nemo, can you track that? Like you tracked
the car?"

"Track it?" Nemo was furious. Ishmael's bloodstains still shone brightly on
his uniformed chest. "More than that, Mr. Quatermain. I intend to catch
it!"

The
Nautilus's
engines thundered to life, and the propellers churned
sediment from the canals. At the urgent steam whistle that signaled imminent
departure, Nemo's crewmen jumped back aboard, ready to go. They ran across the
decks, scrambled down metal rungs into the hold, sealed the hatches
overhead.

With every moment, the Fantom drew farther away.

Captain Nemo went to the control room, which seemed ominously empty without
his first mate, and stood directing the operations. "Enough. We must be off."
His voice was cold and flat, diamond hard, with deliberate determination.

Clattering and straining under heavy gear-turnings, the cable moorings
retracted automatically, tearing the tow-path stanchions from their mounts in a
shower of old brick and rusted anchor-spikes. Creating a foaming wake, the
undersea ship backed away through the narrow canal, working itself around debris
from the collapsed bridge.

"Check all systems," Nemo said into his voice tube. "Verify our repairs. I
need this ship running and ready to submerge as soon as we are away from
Venice."

The uniformed men worked together in a grim blur, calling readings to each
other, running through test results, patching a last few leaks. They checked
vital systems and rerouted to secondary equipment where necessary to keep the
Nautilus
alive and increase its speed. The ship cruised like a plump
crocodile though reeds as it navigated out of the maze of narrow canals.

Daylight began to tinge the sky, illuminating the shaken Carnival revelers
who were still abroad in the streets. Some of them watched the armored hulk
churn along, dragging the torn stanchions like trolling fishhooks behind them.
The engines increased their output, and the vessel stirred up a thunderous
foaming wake, as if a dragon had just passed by. The few bleary-eyed witnesses
assumed the strange ship was merely a part of the Carnival, one more amazing
spectacle.

Behind them, the world leaders finally stepped outside, free of their death
trap. Breathing the open air, they looked as bedraggled as the battered city
buildings. But they were smiling.

As the morning brightened, the people of Venice— many of them nursing a
variety of injuries, as well as hangovers—began to pick up the pieces.

Finally submerged and heading back out into the Adriatic Sea, the
Nautilus
powered into deep water. Its engines and propellers drove it
forward at maximum speed.

But the stolen nautiloid had a substantial head start.

Nemo called the remaining members of the League into his stateroom. While
they watched, he slid back a large panel to reveal a contour map of the ocean
floor; he had drawn it personally, based on data he and Ishmael had collected
over the years and their many thousands of leagues journeying under the sea. Two
spidery mechanical pointers drifted across the contour lines, a large
N
signifying the
Nautilus
, and a lowercase
n
.

Nemo gestured to the smaller pointer, upon which the larger one was slowly
gaining. "That's the nautiloid. We'll be upon it soon."

Tom Sawyer was eager for the hunt, but he noted Mina Harker's sadness. She
seemed paler than usual, quiet and withdrawn. "Are you all right, Ma'am?"

"I'm a little shaken. Just…
Dorian
. I can't believe what he
did."

"Not all fellows wear two faces, you know," Sawyer said, clearly meaning
himself. "Some are perfectly honest and upstanding people."

Mina looked into the young man's blue eyes, then turned away. Private gloom
hung around her like a pale burial shroud.

Then, while they were all intent on the undersea map, a high-pitched whistle
resonated through the stateroom chamber. Nemo looked up, puzzled. The sound
seemed to be coming from far-off, but somewhere
inside
the vessel.

"Nemo?" Quatermain said. "What is it?"

"It is nothing of mine. I know all the sounds on my ship."

A crewman named Patel raced down the outer corridors, urgency written on his
face. Patel dodged other uniformed men, pushing past them to get to the captains
stateroom. The noise followed him, growing louder at first, then higher in pitch
and harder to hear.

Nemo opened his cabin door just in time for the crewman to rush up. He
carried a flat leather case, which he held out in front of him, as if afraid it
might explode at any moment. Thankfully, though, the high-pitched sound had
grown so thin and weak it could no longer be heard.

Patel came to a breathless halt and spluttered his report. "Captain! The
noise came from this." Nemo took the leather case from him, and the crewman
seemed glad to be rid of it.

Inside the stateroom, he gingerly opened the case to reveal a wax disc. He
picked it up and studied it in the light. "It is a recorded disc. Someone has
left us a message."

"But, don't recordings come on cylinders?" Sawyer asked.

"It is a gramophone disc, of the type invented by Emile Berliner," Nemo said.
"I adopted the technology in my vessel some time ago. The Fantom—M—knows that."
He placed the disc on a player that rested on the small bureau in his cabin and
started the machine.

As he listened, Sawyer tried to imagine the gloating man who had recorded the
words specifically for them to hear…

In a dark parlor, M sat in a padded leather chair, his long, thin fingers
laced together. All around him, the furnishings were deep crimson and burgundy,
from the thick curtains on the wall to the Persian rug on the floor. He had
dispensed with all pretense of his Fantom mask or false scars. His heavy brows
drew together, furrowing his high forehead.

He sat near a gramophone recorder, which was operated by a lady recordist.
She seemed pale and listless, without heart or hope. M paid no attention at all
to her until she had finished adjusting the smooth, blank wax disk and placing
the needle in its position.

"Ready, Professor?" she said, lowering her voice to a whisper.
"Recording."

M began to speak and, with a faint scratching sound, the recorder needle
began scraping a thin spiral of wax from the gramophone disc.

"Gentlemen. If you're hearing this, then every step leading up to it has gone
as planned, even if you do not realize it. Yet."

Smiling coolly, Dorian Gray stepped from the shadows in the den to amble
around his leather chair. "And I have been true to the goals set me, as well."
He spoke in a dry voice, making sure the gramophone picked up his words, his
irony. "Yes, it's me—Dorian. You know by now that I'm no loyal son of the
empire."

He casually lifted an apple from a bowl of fruit on the mahogany table, set
it back down with disinterest, then walked over to stand behind the high-backed
leather chair where M sat.

"In fact, my loyalty to Mr. M comes in no small part from his possession of
something I hold dear to my heart." From behind, Dorian looked down at the
cadaverous leader. His eyes flashed, as if he could barely suppress an impulse
to strangle the man. "Something I'll do anything to regain."

M leaned forward like a vulture, as if the audience listening to his
recording could actually see him. "Everything so far has been misdirection." He
smiled over at Sanderson Reed, who also stood in the room for the recording. "My
bumbling bureaucrat assistant, Sanderson Reed, who so easily recruited Mr.
Quatermain. The assassins in Kenya. Your whole mission, and the excuse I gave
you. Venice. Even the assembly of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen."

He chuckled with a sound like witches' brooms rattling together. "
There
is no League
! There never was. A few old paintings, an unused meeting room
in the basement of the museum, and a dashing good story. It was just a ruse to
get me closer to my real goals."

"You see, I want
you
. Each of you, even tired old Quatermain. I have
no doubt he'll capture the bestial Mr. Hyde in Paris, where the others have so
far failed. That doddering Monsieur Dupin has been blundering about for months
in Paris, ascribing the murders in the Rue Morgue to a wild monkey!"

Realizing he had strayed from the point, M sat straighter in his chair; the
leather upholstery creaked. Gray picked up the apple from the bowl after all and
bit into it with a loud crunch. Sanderson Reed looked at him, offended by the
suave man's attitude.

M, seeing that the gramophone disc was nearly full, the needle approaching
the center of its recording surface, continued. "So, my avid listeners, the
important question is—why? Why all this cloak and dagger, masks and mystery? And
why did I select the group of you, in particular, instead of, say, Sexton Blake,
or Robur the conqueror, or Frankenstein's monster?"

He grinned, spreading parchment lips to reveal a row of tiny white teeth.
"Because in the war that is to come, I have already acquired many grand and
innovative weapons from the most brilliant scientists of all nations of the
world. However, I intend to wield the greatest weapon of all—the power of the
League itself. And to that end, I set my wolf among you sheep. He will lead you
far from green pastures."

"Growl," Gray said, then took another bite of his apple.

Listening to the recording in Nemo's stateroom, the members of the League
looked at each other and recalled details of their interactions with Gray, as
all the pieces clicked into place… like a bomb ready to detonate.

"Gray played like he was bored in his library, ready to turn us down, and
then he claimed the battle with the Fantom's marksmen was just the spur he
needed to change his mind." Quatermain put a hand to the aching shoulder wound.
"He knew it was going to happen all along."

"So that was his plan if I hadn't shown up," Sawyer said, crossing his arms.
"Shucks, I should have known better."

The gramophone recording continued to play. His voice sounded superior and
dismissive. "—And all the while I would collect
you
, thanks to Mr.
Gray. The parts of you that I need. Nemo's science… Skinner's skin sample."

Mina looked shocked as the realization dawned. "Magnesium phosphorus.
Photographers' flash."

Nemos hands twitched as he remembered standing with Ishmael in the control
room, sniffing samples of the powder they had found. "Yes, he must have
photographed the details of my
Nautilus
."

Quatermain nodded, also remembering. "And in the ice room, where we kept Hyde
chained, Skinner said that Gray had scratched him.
Accidentally
, he
said. Must have used a little scraper to collect cells from the invisible
man."

Jekyll blinked his saucerlike eyes, then swallowed hard in his scrawny
throat. "That's what happened to the missing vial of elixir in my medical bag.
Gray took it." He rubbed his temples, as if a massive migraine were growing
behind his eyes. "He's stolen us. And we let him."

Then, with greatest triumph, Grays voice finished on the recording, "And, of
course, dear Mina's blood."

She limited her reaction to a faint gasp as she recalled how he had handed
her a glass of amontillado sherry, how the glass had so easily broken, slicing
her palm, how Gray had been concerned and attentive, pressing his handkerchief
to the oozing blood…

The League members remained stunned in the captain's stateroom, all of them
exhibiting signs of dismay. Nemo summed up their reactions by announcing with
cold threat, "And now we all have our sufficient reasons for wanting to kill
him."

Bothered by his oversensitive ears and the incessant, increasing pain in the
back of his skull, the fidgety Doctor Jekyll looked out a dim porthole; he saw
much more than just deep water and the faint shadows of fish outside. He caught
a reflection of Hyde's twisted and demonic face. In the image, his brutish alter
ego clapped both spasming hands to his temples, pressing against his hairy ears,
grimacing in agony. Inside Jekyll's head, Hyde roared.
Turn it off, Henry.
Turn it off

Lifting her head out of the feelings of betrayal and anger that Gray's words
inspired, Mina noticed that Dr. Jekyll was standing away from the others,
clamping his palms against his ears as if trying to keep his skull from flying
apart. "Henry? Are you all right?"