Ruler of the Night

by David Morrell

  “There’s a fire!” he yelled to the guard. “Hurry out here and help!”

  Harrigan raced onward, feeling the urgency and fear that he’d known in the war. He passed people shouting from a third-class carriage, where the passengers were herded together in one large area. He hoped that the baggage-compartment guard would unlock them, but he himself couldn’t stop to do so—his attention was directed solely toward the burning carriage.

  Coughing from the smoke, he ran past a second-class carriage. Ahead, he saw the flames in the first-class area. He heard their roar.

  He also heard screams.

  He shoved the key into a lock, twisted, and pulled at a door. Two men dove out with such force that Harrigan couldn’t get away from the door quickly enough. Its painful impact knocked him onto the gravel.

  Dazed, he struggled to his feet and forced himself to move closer to the blaze. When he unlocked the next door, a man in flames hurtled out, colliding with him. Before Harrigan could try to help him, the screaming man tumbled down a slope, setting fire to the dry grass.

  Harrigan tugged off his overcoat and charged down the slope. He threw the coat over the shrieking, writhing figure and worked to suffocate the flames. He stamped on the burning grass.

  “Help!” people screamed from the other compartments.

  Where’s my key? Harrigan thought in a panic. What’s happened to my key?

  Flames revealed where he’d dropped it in the grass. He grabbed it and ran up the slope. This time, he knew enough to stay clear when he unlocked the door and two men surged out.

  He hurried to the next carriage. In the roar of the fire, the door bent. Heat lifted the roof.

  Stumbling away, he suddenly heard a different roar, terrifyingly familiar, intensifying, rushing toward him.

  He swung toward the back of the train and saw the lamps of a locomotive speed around a dark curve. The approaching train was going too fast to stop.

  Its whistle shrieked.

  “Run!” Harrigan yelled. He shoved passengers down the slope.

  The whistle kept shrieking, growing louder.

  “Hurry! Go!”

  Looking back as he raced away, Harrigan saw the speeding train strike the brake van, upend it, and propel it from the tracks. Sounding like the thunder of cannons in the Crimea, the other carriages rammed into one another, some of them rising, others overturning. They flipped down the slope and across the field.

  The engine from the oncoming train surged off the rails and plowed down the slope. Next to him, a woman tripped and fell. Harrigan grabbed her and dragged her along the grass. The engine’s boiler exploded. Steam burst across the field, chunks of metal flying. As Harrigan threw himself over the woman to protect her, heat scorched his back.

  “Wyld’s Monster Globe,” Lord Palmerston told the driver as he and his guard climbed into a cab.

  “Beggin’ your pardon, guv’nor, but it ain’t open at this time of night.”

  “Tonight it will be.”

  Lord Palmerston didn’t take the precaution of instructing the driver to use an indirect route so that he and his escort could see if the lanterns of a vehicle followed them. On this occasion, it would in fact be better if someone did follow them.

  The Monster Globe had been constructed four years earlier to coincide with the arrival of the millions of visitors coming to London for the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Sixty feet in diameter, one of the tallest buildings in the West End, the globe occupied much of Soho’s Leicester Square, a once-pastoral area with lawns and trees that had degenerated into weeds, trash, and dead cats. An entrepreneur named James Wyld had persuaded the square’s owners to lease it to him, promising to improve the grounds immensely. Wyld’s idea of improvement was to fill Leicester Square with his Monster Globe. For the price of a shilling, visitors could step inside and admire plaster models of the world’s continents, oceans, rivers, and mountains. As many as three million people did so, and none seemed to think it bizarre that they viewed a world turned outside in, where mountains that normally rose toward the sky now pointed inward toward the Earth’s core.

  “Again, beggin’ your pardon, guv’nor, but you can see the place is dark,” the cabdriver said when they arrived.

  “Thank you anyway,” Lord Palmerston told him as he and his guard stepped down. He paid twice the normal rate so that the driver would be sure to remember bringing him here.

  As the cab clattered away, a member of Lord Palmerston’s security team stepped from the shadows.

  “Did she arrive?” Lord Palmerston asked.

  “Five minutes ago, Prime Minister. At this streetlamp. As lovely as she is and with her pink costume, anyone watching couldn’t have failed to notice her.”

  “You searched the globe everywhere?”

  “It’s deserted, sir, except for your guest.”

  Despite the cold wind, Lord Palmerston unbuttoned his overcoat. The streetlamp revealed a bright blue waistcoat beneath his gray suit. The festive garment was noteworthy, given that, according to current fashion, vibrant colors for men were considered undignified. In Lord Palmerston’s youth, his present costume would have been considered dull, but by contemporary standards, he looked daring.

  Straightening his back and expanding his chest to make himself appear younger than his seventy years, he walked toward the silhouette of the huge globe. Although the place wasn’t illuminated, the door was unlocked. Inside, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the shadow of the revolving gate next to the ticket booth. Then he pushed through and reached a vestibule in which there were cases he couldn’t see well but that he knew displayed various rocks and diagrams of the Earth’s geological levels.

  A light seeped past the edge of an Oriental curtain. His footsteps echoing, he swept the curtain aside and entered the globe.

  He encountered four platforms, one atop another, accessible by wooden stairs. Lamps hung from the platforms. During the day, light came through a glass cap in the ceiling in the position of the Arctic Circle. He noted the outlines of continents and oceans projecting from the inside of the globe everywhere around him. Feeling as if he were encircled by stalactites in a cavern, he wondered if this was the sort of crazed perspective that the Opium-Eater dreamed about.

  The first landmass Lord Palmerston recognized was Australia. A Crown colony, he noted with approval. As he proceeded up the first staircase, he identified other regions that belonged to the British Empire—India, Burma, Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand…

  Of course, those were the British colonies in only one area, and as he climbed, he looked in other directions and saw even more British colonies. The empire’s extent made him proud. He had power over more territory and people than anyone else had ever possessed in the history of the world.

  But despite that power, when he reached the third level, he felt short of breath. His determination gave him the strength to hide it, just as he felt compelled to hide his advancing age by dyeing his sideburns brown.

  A young woman waited for him on the top level. Astonishingly beautiful, she wore a beguiling pink bonnet and matching dress. The pink provided extra luster to her lips. Her name at the moment was Charlotte, but she had used many different names in her acting career. Currently performing roles on an international political stage, she found diplomats, generals, and men of wealth to be more amusing than the gentlemen who’d applauded her in blood-drenched melodramas in London theaters.

  “I hope you feel as radiant as your appearance indicates,” Lord Palmerston said.

  “It’s no wonder you survived in politics for half a century,” Charlotte responded, kissing his cheek. “Your compliments always sound as if you mean them.”

  “But I do mean them,” he said, kissing her in return.

  They stood beneath ventilation tubes that whistled from the wind outside and distorted what they said. If, despite the thoroughness of his security team, someone happened to witness this meeting, it would be from a distance, and the spy could report only that they kept
their heads together, evidently exchanging endearments. What else would one expect from a man whose dalliances over the years had made him notorious?

  “Dr. Mandt reached England this morning,” Charlotte whispered in his ear. “At this moment, he should be arriving at Sedwick Hill.”

  Sedwick Hill. The reference made Lord Palmerston exhale. To an observer, it would have seemed that he reacted to stroking her neck.

  “Finally. The last report was from Antwerp, and that was three days ago. I feared the Russians had captured him.” In contrast to his tender gestures, Lord Palmerston’s voice was quietly angry. “But now the police are interested in Sedwick Hill because of Daniel Harcourt’s murder. None of this effort would have been necessary if Dr. Mandt hadn’t run. If he’d kept his wits, he could have waited for a month and then told the new czar he had family business that required his return to the German States. The czar did have pneumonia, after all. No one would have questioned that he died from lung failure.”

  “Dr. Mandt claims he didn’t have a choice,” Charlotte said, pressing her cheek against his. “The moment the czar died, jealous Russian doctors accused him of negligence. He believed that it wouldn’t be long before they accused him of much worse. He escaped while he could.”

  “But if Russian agents keep chasing him, if they capture him and force him to tell the truth, if the Russians accuse me…” Lord Palmerston felt a moment’s dizziness as he glanced from the top platform toward the inward-projecting continents and oceans of the world.

  “A great risk—a great result,” Charlotte murmured close to him. “It turns out the new czar’s appetite for war isn’t as strong as his father’s.”

  “I knew I was right.”

  “Russia’s commoners are rioting because of food shortages the war inflicted upon them,” Charlotte continued. “At your instructions, my operatives spread reports that Russian soldiers are starving by the thousands while the rich stuff themselves with caviar and vodka. We told peasants the locations of food warehouses reserved for the aristocracy. We organized attacks on those warehouses. We set fire to mansions and made it seem that angry peasants were doing it. The new czar doesn’t know which is worse, the cost of continuing the war or the possibility of a revolution at home. His resolve is weakening.”

  “Maybe our resolve is weakening also,” Lord Palmerston said. “Tonight there was yet another incident involving a train. No one will feel safe anywhere. I worry that the Russians are turning my tactics against me.”

  The wagon lurched to an unexpected stop. In back, a nervous man peered from under a canvas cover. Beneath stars and a partial moon, all he saw was a shadowy field.

  “Dr. Mandt, it’s time to get out,” the driver said in English-accented German.

  “But there’s nothing here,” Mandt objected.

  “Those are the instructions we were given,” the driver’s partner said. His German was English-accented also.

  “But…but it’s dark.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “You plan to kill me here, is that it?”

  “Kill you?”

  “Slash my throat and bury me in this field.”

  “Doctor, I guarantee that if we meant to kill you, it wouldn’t be after all the effort it took to arrange your escape from the Russians. Please step down. This young man is going to lead us to where you’ll spend the night.”

  “I was foolish to agree to—”

  “Look at it this way. If the plan was to kill you, there’s nothing you could do about it, so save yourself a lot of worry. Be optimistic. Step down and let this young man lead us to where you’ll be staying for a while.”

  Trembling, Mandt crawled from beneath the canvas cover. His legs almost didn’t support him when his boots touched the dirt road.

  The only light was a lantern so shielded that it barely allowed the wagon’s horse to see where to put its hooves.

  “A young man? Where?” Mandt asked.

  Saying something in English, a tall man stepped around the side of the wagon.

  The driver translated. “He says that where you’ll be staying is down that lane.”

  “What lane?”

  “Over there. He says we can’t just drive up to the entrance because the sound of the wagon would wake up some of the patients. In the morning, there’d be questions about who’d arrived in the middle of the night, and we don’t want any questions.”

  “Patients?”

  “It’s hard to describe. You’ll understand when you get there.”

  “You’re going to imprison me in a madhouse?”

  “Doctor, please calm yourself. It isn’t a madhouse, although the prices the patients happily pay—they’re referred to as guests—might make it seem that they’re crazy. Now let’s go, and from here on, no talking.”

  Without a lantern, the young man led the doctor and his escort down the lane. A cold wind forced Mandt to clutch his overcoat and tremble more severely. After his long, fearsome journey, he expected dark shapes to jump from the murky trees that he passed and attack him.

  Ahead, a hill loomed against the starlit sky. Three tall buildings stood next to it, none of their windows illuminated at this late hour. The wind whistled as the doctor and his escort were led toward a side door of the middle building.

  The door opened, revealing only darkness. The young man guided Mandt inside.

  “It’s safe here.” The escort from the wagon whispered so softly that Mandt could barely hear the words. “Don’t be afraid.”

  It’s easy for him to say, Mandt thought. He isn’t the one who’s been terrified for the past two weeks.

  The escort started to return to the wagon.

  “Wait,” Mandt pleaded. “Don’t leave me.”

  “Quiet,” an educated voice said in German as a hand shut the door.

  In total darkness, a match flared, hurting Mandt’s eyes.

  “What he told you is true,” the voice continued. “You’re safe here.”

  SEVEN

  THE HOUSE OF ICE

  “Good morning!” a distinguished-looking man said to De Quincey and Emily. After they’d knocked on the door, he’d opened it himself rather than relying on a servant. “I’m Edward Richmond. Carolyn’s husband.”

  In his midsixties with a fashionable goatee and mustache, he wore a tailored frock coat, a ruffled white shirt, and a dark blue cravat that suggested financial success without being vulgar.

  “Come in, come in. That’s a nasty cold wind out there. Please set down your travel bags.”

  He didn’t react to De Quincey’s short stature or to Emily’s bloomer dress. Nor did he react when Emily shook hands with him rather than curtsying.

  For her part, Emily tried not to react to an entrance hall that was more opulent than that at Lord Palmerston’s house. Its staircase was more impressive, its brass handrail flaring outward to accommodate the widest of dresses. Ancient figurines and exquisite landscape paintings surrounded her, but they didn’t seem to have been chosen to impress visitors and proclaim wealth. Instead of being garish, they exhibited remarkable taste.

  “My wife will be with you in a moment. After I returned from Manchester last evening, she couldn’t stop gushing about her discovery that you were staying just around the corner from us, Mr. De Quincey.”

  “Please, call us Thomas and Emily,” De Quincey said.

  “I’d be honored, provided that you call me Edward. I think we can allow each other the liberty, given your relationship with Carolyn. How long has it been since she last saw you? Around fifty years? She almost made me jealous when she described the horseman’s cloak that the two of you slept beneath when she was a child and how you protected her from rats that she feared were ghosts.”

  “With a poison I invented,” De Quincey said. He reached into a pocket of his overcoat, apparently about to produce a bottle of the substance.

  “No, Father,” Emily said, knowing the type of bottle that he actually reached for.

  Relucta
ntly, De Quincey lowered his hand. “I mixed phosphorus with sugar, lard, flour, and brandy. Attracted by the glow, the rats would eat what amounted to an uncooked biscuit and die. That was my parting gift to her and—”

  “And it worked,” Carolyn’s voice interrupted.

  They turned to see her coming down the steps gracefully, carrying a small overnight bag. She wore a flattering travel costume of blue wool, finely textured and soft-looking, its color enhancing her auburn hair. As on the previous day, her cape matched her dress, and the billow of the dress was created by several petticoats instead of a hoop. The ease with which she spoke as she descended the staircase indicated that, like Emily, she didn’t wear a corset.

  “Carolyn still uses the paste,” Edward said. “But now it’s mostly to provide illumination at night so no one will trip in the dark. I have a business relationship with a company that’s considering manufacturing it. Thomas, because the idea came from you, perhaps I could arrange for you to get a small royalty if the product ever goes on the market.”

  Carolyn leaned down to kiss De Quincey on the cheek. “What an excellent idea.”

  “It is indeed a good thing that I’m not a jealous man,” Edward said in a tone of amusement.

  “Good morning, Emily,” Carolyn said, hugging her.

  “Good morning!”

  “I hope you don’t think less of me because I’m not going to church on Sunday. Our daughter’s personal difficulties—her husband’s health problems—are more important to me than sitting in a pew.”

  “I told a servant to bring a cab,” Edward said. “But Carolyn, I still recommend that you postpone your journey.”

  “Absolutely not. I won’t let them make me a hermit.”

  “Them? Is something wrong?” Emily asked.

  “Last night, there was an accident after a train left Paddington Station,” Edward explained. “The train caught fire. After it stopped, another train crashed into it. Several people were killed.”