The List Of Seven (5 page)

"It is."

"Where are we going?"

"Where would you like to go?"

"Someplace safe."

"Difficult."

"Because you don't know, or because you don't wish to tell me?"

"Because, as of this moment, there aren't all that many places you can truly consider safe: Doyle ... safe. Not much overlap there, I'm sorry to say." He smiled again.

"You find that amusing."

"To the contrary. Your situation is obviously quite grave."

"My situation?"

"Rather than worry, however, in the face of adversity it's

always my inclination to take action. That's what one should do in any event. General principle. Take action."

"Is that what we're doing now, Professor?"

"Oh my, yes." Sacker grinned again.

"I yield the floor," said Doyle darkly, his frustration with this cheerful enigma mitigated only by the man having twice within the hour saved his life.

"Another drink first?" he asked, offering the flask again. Doyle shook his head. "I really would recommend it."

Doyle took another drink. "Let's have it, then."

"You've attempted to publish a work of fiction recently."

"What's that got to do with any of this?"

"I'm endeavoring to tell you." He smiled again.

"The answer is yes."

"Hmm. Rough business, the publishing game. Fairly discouraging, I imagine, but then you don't strike me as the easily discouraged sort. Perseverance, that's the ticket."

Doyle bit his tongue and waited while Sacker took another nip.

"You recently circulated a manuscript of yours for publication entitled—have I got this right?—The Dark Brotherhood'?"

"Correct."

"Without any notable success, I'm afraid—"

"You don't need to rub salt in the wound."

"Establishing the facts, old boy. Haven't read it myself. I'm given to understand your story deals at some length, as fiction, with what one might characterize as a ... thaumatur-gical conspiracy."

"In part." How could he know that? thought Doyle.

"A sort of sorcerers' cabal."

"You're not far off—the villains of the piece, anyway."

"A coven of evil masterminds colluding with some, shall we say, delinquent spirits."

"It's an adventure story, isn't it?" said Doyle defensively.

"With a supernatural bent."

"Fair enough."

"Good versus evil, that sort of thing."

"The eternal struggle."

"In other words, a potboiler."

"I'd hoped my sights were set a bit higher," Doyle complained.

"Don't listen to me, friend, I'm no critic. Are you published anywhere?"

"A few stories," Doyle replied, with only modest exaggeration. "I'm a frequent contributor to a monthly periodical."

"What would that be?"

"It's for children, I'm sure you wouldn't know it."

"Come on, what's it called?"

"The Boy's Own Paper," said Doyle.

"Right, never heard of it. Tell you what I think, though; nothing wrong with a bit of entertainment, is there? That's what people want in the end, after all, a little diversion, a ripping good tale, leave behind their troubles and woe."

"Stimulate a little thought while you're at it," Doyle offered sheepishly.

"And why not? Noble aspirations yield greater achievements."

"I appreciate the fine sensibilities—now would you please tell me what my book's got to do with what's happened tonight?"

The man paused, then leaned forward confidentially. "The manuscript was circulated."

"By whom?"

"Someone with connections."

"Circulated where?"

"Into the wrong sorts of hands."

Doyle paused and leaned in to meet Sacker halfway. "I'm afraid you're going to have to be a bit more specific," Doyle said.

Sacker held Doyle's eyes mesmerically and lowered his voice.

"Picture if you will a group of extraordinary individuals. Ruthless, intelligent, even brilliant persons. Well placed, enormously rewarded by the world for their skills and achievements. All distinctly lacking what you and I would call... basic morality. United by one common pursuit: acquisition of power without limits. Hungering for more. Obsessively secret—exactly who they are is impossible to say. Rest assured they are real. Does this sound at all familiar to you?"

Doyle could barely speak. "My book."

"Yes, Doyle. Your book. You've written a manuscript of fiction, but by some elusive process you have drawn down into your work an uncanny approximation of the depraved plottings of a malignant sect of black magicians, seeking an end not at all unlike that pursued by your characters. Which was to—"

"To elicit the help of evil spirits in annihilating the membrane that separates the physical and etheric plane."

"In order to—"

"Gain dominion over the material world and those who inhabit it."

"Right. And if tonight's seance was any indication, my friend, they have breached the battlements and set foot across the threshold."

"It's not possible."

"Do you believe what your eyes saw in that room?"

Doyle found he was unwilling to hear his answer.

"It is possible," Sacker maintained.

Doyle felt a jolt of dislocation, as if he were in a dream. His mind struggled to stay above the flood tide of shock and dismay. The fact was, he had borrowed not only the title of his book but his villains' motives from the woolliest works of Madame Blavatsky. Who would have thought his petty larceny would come so hideously home to roost?

"If my book has fallen into their hands ..."

"Put yourself in their shoes: What purpose does life hold for these diseased monsters without the threatening presence—real or imagined—of formidable enemies, whose very existence serves only to heighten their demented self-aggrandizement?"

"They think I've somehow stumbled onto their plan...."

"If they mean to kill you outright they probably wouldn't have gone to all this trouble, which leads me to believe they want you alive, if that's any comfort to you."

"But surely they must know ... I mean, they can't think ... for God's sake, it's only a book."

"Yes. Pity, that."

Doyle stared at him. "What's all this got to do with you?"

"Oh, I've been onto these rogues a good sight longer than you have."

"But I haven't been onto them at all; until this moment I never even knew they existed."

"Yes, well, I wouldn't care to try telling them that, would you?"

Doyle was speechless.

"Fortunately, my tracking them put me close at hand this evening. Unfortunately, I'm something of a marked man now as well."

Sacker rapped sharply on the roof. The carriage came to a sudden halt.

"Rest assured: We've put a real spoke in their wheel tonight. Keep your wits about you, and don't waste a moment's time. And I wouldn't bother going to the police with all this, because they will think you mad, and word will only filter up to someone who could do you even greater harm."

"Greater than murder?"

All trace of a smile vanished. "There are worse things," he said, then opened the door. "Best of luck, Doyle. We'll be in touch."

Sacker extended a hand. Doyle shook it. In his dazed, bewildered state, the next thing he knew, he was standing on the street outside his front door, watching the scar-faced cabbie tip bis hat, turn, and whip the carriage hurriedly into the night.

Doyle looked down at the hand Sacker had shaken. He was holding a small, exquisitely crafted silver insignia in the form of a human eye.

chapter five LEBOUX

MAELSTROM WHIRLED INSIDE DOYLE'S MIND. He LOOKED

at his watch: 9:52. An ironmonger's cart rattled by. Doyle shivered with nostalgic longing as the prosaic, quotidian world in which he'd spent all but the last two hours of his life receded from him like dying sunlight. In the time it takes to bake bread, he had seen his life, if not his entire conception of the universe, turned on its head.

In the stillness left by the passing of the cart, forms and faces swam out of the dark; every shadow seemed to pulse with hidden, unspeakable danger. Doyle hustled to the presumed safety of his doorstep.

A face looked down at him from a high window. His neighbor, the Russian woman, Petrovitch. Wait—had there been a second face behind hers? Another look: both faces gone, curtains swaying.

Did his staircase, always a trigger for the pleasant prospect of home and its attendant comforts, now exude an aura of dread menace? No longer certain he could trust his instincts, Doyle took revolver in hand, trusting its filled chambers to contend with whatever might await, and slowly ascended the twenty-one steps. The door to his rooms came into view. It stood open.

The wood where the doorknob used to reside was splintered like so many matchsticks. The debris lay here, on the floor outside—the knob torn off, not kicked in. Doyle leaned back against the wall and listened. Certain that nothing stirred inside, with a light touch he eased the door open and gasped at what lay before him.

Every square inch of the front room looked to have been drooled or saturated with a clear, viscous fluid. Streaked and

textured, as if a gigantic brush had been maniacally stroked from floor to ceiling. A smell like scorched mattress ticking permeated the air. Lazy smoke curled up from where the substance lay thickest. Stepping inside, he felt the ooze suck at the soles of his shoes, but no residue clung to them when he lifted his foot. It moved to the touch, it had body, but its crust remained integral, intact. Doyle could discern the tessellated pattern of his Persian carpet suspended inside the stuff, like a scarab frozen in amber. He examined his chair and davenport. Side table, oil lamp, ottoman. Candlesticks. Inkwell. Teacup. The surface of every object in the room had been partially liquefied, then cooled and hardened.

If this was a warning—an inescapable conclusion—what exactly was its messenger trying to communicate? Perhaps to incite the question, What kind of damage could they perpetrate on a human body? Doyle picked up one of his books from the desk. It seemed to weigh about the same, but it wobbled in his hand, spineless as an overcooked vegetable. He could still turn the thickened pages, could almost make out the blurred, distorted text, but the thing lying limply in his hand no longer remotely resembled his enduring idea of what constituted a book.

Moving as quickly as the slippery flooring would allow, Doyle made his way to the bedroom. As he opened the door it drooped in on itself, the top corner folding over like a dogeared page. Doyle saw that the strange liquefaction had penetrated a few inches into the next room and then abruptly stopped: His bedroom had escaped the same debasement.

"Thank God," Doyle muttered.

Pulling his Gladstone bag from the closet, he dropped into it the invertebrate book, a change of clothes, his shaving kit, and the box of ammunition he kept hidden in the upper reaches of the armoire.

Back through the vulcanized room, Doyle stopped at the door—someone outside, the scuff of a shoe. He bent down to peer through the extruded keyhole and saw Petrovitch leaning against the balustrade, hands clutched to her scrawny bosom.

"Mrs. Petrovitch, what's happened here?" he asked, exiting to the hall.

"Doctor," she said, grasping his offered hand fearfully.

"Did you see anything? Did you hear something down here?"

Nodding vigorously. He couldn't recall the extent of her English, but it seemed at the moment particularly lean,

"Big. Big," she said. "Train."

"A sound like a train?"

Nodding again, she tried to supply the sound, accompanied by a series of generalized, extravagant gestures. She's been into the wine again, Doyle realized. Not without provocation. Glancing past her, he noticed another woman hanging back at the foot of the descending stairs. The second face he'd seen in the window: a short, stout woman, round face, penetrating eyes. Something familiar about her.

"Dear Mrs. Petrovitch, did ... you ... see ... anything?"

Her eyes grew round and large, and she traced the outline of a huge shape with her hands.

"Big? Very big?" Doyle offered encouragingly. "A man, was it?"

She shook her head. "Black," she said simply. "Black."

"Mrs. Petrovitch. Go to your rooms. Stay there. Do not come down here again until morning. Do you understand?"

She nodded, then as he turned to go tugged on his sleeve and pointed to the woman behind her.

"My friend is—"

"I'll meet your friend another time. Do as I've told you, Mrs. Petrovitch, please," he said, gently removing her hand. "Now I really must go."

"No, Doctor ... no, she—"

"Get some rest now. Have a nice glass of wine. There's a good Petrovitch. Good night now. Good night." The delivery of which carried him down the stairs and out of her sight.

He kept to the busiest streets and to each street's busiest side, seeking the light, walking always toward the thick of the crowd. No one approached or accosted him. He met no one's gaze and still felt the burn of a thousand malevolent eyes.

Doyle spent what remained of the night at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where he was known, only an hour of it sleeping on one of the cots set aside for working physicians, in a room surrounded by a dozen others, none of which afforded him the security of sanctuary. Displaying his bedrock

rectitude, and perhaps more revealingly his fear of ridicule, he spoke to no one, not even his closest colleagues, of his trouble.

The light of day brought few sparse grains of salt to the previous night's adventures. There must be clear physical explanations for everything that occurred at the seance, Doyle told himself—I just haven't hit on them as yet—no, stop; even this is a deception I'm imposing on myself. The mind depends on equilibrium and will seek it at any cost. This doesn't mean I accept all of what Sacker told me as gospel, but the unvarnished truth is, I have passed through a doorway that has vanished behind me; therefore I cannot go back. Therefore I must go forward.

As he walked out into the cool morning air, he found his terror and disorientation receding, and what quickly came to the fore was fury at the brutal slaying of Lady Nicholson and her brother. Her face would not leave his mind; her beseeching eyes, the cry as she fell. She sought my help, and I failed her in life; I will not do so now, he vowed.