The Dead Assassin

by Vaughn Entwistle

  Conan Doyle’s heart fluttered. He raised a hand to protest, but his wife shushed him. “I admit I am jealous. What wife would not be? But I am a realist. We both know how tenuous my grip on life is. I would never willingly give you up … never … but I have watched how that young woman is with my children. I love you and the children more dearly than I love my own life. I despair to think of you lonely. I despair to think of my children growing up without a mother. It has long been my greatest fear. I do not seek to die readily. But neither shall I seek to linger. For once, I see happiness before me.” Her voice broke. Tears trickled unashamedly down her drawn face. “Y-you have my blessing. You both have my blessing.…”

  Conan Doyle said nothing as his wife labored up the stairs, but when he returned to the parlor, his heart felt so full he feared it might burst.

  For the sake of decorum, Conan Doyle had surrendered his bedroom to their houseguest, while he slept on the day bed in his study. By the time all had retired for the evening and the house fell silent, night and its darkness crouched on the other side of the window glass. He sat at his writing desk, sipping a brandy and staring at his own reflection in the window.

  He was a young thirty-six years old. His brown eyes were bright and clear. His hair was dark and glossy without a single gray hair. Thanks to a regimen of walking, riding his tricycle, and vigorous sports ranging from golf to cricket, he was physically in his prime. His life with Touie was approaching its end. Now he dared to entertain a new life, a second life, with the ravishing Jean Leckie.

  A stir of shadows outside startled him from his reverie. Something had flitted past the window. An owl? A bat? Or something larger? Could an intruder be lurking?

  He reached for the right-hand drawer of his writing desk, slid it open, and fumbled for a heavy object trussed in a black cloth. He drew it out—never taking his eyes from the window—and shook loose the wrapping, revealing his Webley revolver. His large fingers scrabbled in the drawer for a box of cartridges. Charged with adrenaline, his hands shook slightly as he pushed the fat bullets into the empty chambers, loading all six rounds. He stood up from his chair, banged the drawer shut with one knee, cinched tight the belt of his robe, and strode for the door.

  He stepped from the house into a dark, moonless night. Damp night air pooled liquid and chill in his lungs. The revolver held ready, his slippered feet silently trod the front path to the road, where he stood, peering this way and that, scanning the shadows. Something hunkered in the far distance, an amorphous blob of darkness. But it was too dark to make out any detail. He could be looking at anything: a stand of hedgerows, a random tangle of shadows. Was that a carriage of some kind parked atop the rise of the lane? And then, as if in confirmation, he caught the faint whinny of a horse in the distance. It seemed to confirm his deduction, but then he remembered that his farmer neighbor kept several horses. It could well be one of his. He looked down at the dirt road for wheel tracks, but he had not brought a lantern with him and the roadway was unreadably dark.

  With his back turned and his attention fixed at his feet, he did not see the man-sized shadow slide from behind the bushes at the front of his house and step in through the open front door. Conan Doyle stood stock still for several long minutes, looking, listening. He drew in a deep breath, sniffing the air, which held country smells of manure and the tang of peat fires.

  He had been imagining things.

  He suddenly became aware of the weighty revolver in his hand and slipped it into the pocket of his robe, then turned and shuffled his slippered feet back toward the warmth and light of his open front door.

  * * *

  Conan Doyle was dredged up from a hideous dream by the rapatatatatat of tinny drumming. His mind bumped up against the membrane of sleep like a balloon bumping up against a ceiling it could not break through.

  And then a piercing scream tore his eyes open.

  He struggled to kick loose of the tangle of sheets wrapped about his legs and tumbled from the daybed onto the floor. Scrambling to his feet, he banged a knee painfully into a chair and limped toward the door of his study, only to turn back to snatch up the revolver from his desktop. By the time he left the study, the drumming had stopped. His heart galloped when he looked down the hallway and saw the front door standing wide open. Then a second piercing shriek drew his eyes up the staircase. A young girl’s scream.

  “Mary!” he uttered and bounded up the stairs two at a time. He reached the landing just as Louise Doyle staggered out of her bedroom, clutching the doorframe for support. Conan Doyle ran into his daughter’s room only to find the bed rumpled but empty. For a horrible moment he thought she’d been snatched. But then the screams continued. He ran back onto the landing, noticing for the first time that the door to his own bedroom was ajar. When he and Touie rushed in, they found Mary wrapped in a cocoon of bedclothes, eyes wide, her small body convulsing with terror.

  “Mary!” Conan Doyle said. “What is it? What ever’s the matter?”

  “A—a—a—a…” The young girl was near catatonic. “… a h-horrible man! He t-took the lady.”

  For the first time, Conan Doyle became aware of Jean Leckie’s absence.

  “What happened?” Louise Doyle urged. “Mary, you must tell us.”

  The young girl’s eyes darted wildly. “A bad dream woke me up. I brought my doll to sleep with the nice lady. I fell asleep, but then a noise woke me up. A man was standing over us. A horrible, horrible man. She pushed me under the covers so he wouldn’t see me. But then he grabbed the lady and carried her out. I screamed, but he didn’t stop.”

  The full force of events hit Conan Doyle and his face prickled with pins and needles of shock. He turned and rushed from the room, thundered down the staircase and bolted outside. By now, dawn was a fiery stain on the eastern horizon. He reached the lane in time to see the figure of a man shambling toward the square hulk of a hearse parked in the distance. The figure carried a human form hanging limp in its arms. From the shambling walk, he instantly recognized that it was not a living man.

  He set off running up the lane, sharp-edged stones cutting painfully into the soles of his bare feet. But the hearse was too far away and he would be too late to reach it. He stumbled to a halt and raised the revolver, drawing a bead on the back of the shambling figure, waiting for his pounding heart to slow before he squeezed off a round. But then he lowered the gun. In this light, at this range, he dare not risk a shot lest he hit Miss Leckie. Two men in undertaker’s garb flung open the glass door and the monster clambered inside with his burden. Conan Doyle heard the coachman’s shout and the crack of a whip and could only watch, helpless and impotent, as the hearse rumbled over the crown of the hill and vanished from sight.

  Miss Leckie had been taken.

  Stunned and despondent, he stumbled back into a house in uproar: the children crying, his wife screaming with terror, the maid and cook wailing and scurrying about. He stood in the hallway, cudgeling his brains. What to do? Who to call for help?

  And then he noticed Kingsley’s windup guardsman lying in the middle of the hall rug. Its drumming had been what awakened him, but the tinplate toy had been crushed, flattened beneath the monster’s heavy tread. The metal seams had split wide and when he stooped to pick it up, something metallic and shiny fell out upon the rug.

  A brass cogwheel.

  It was an instantly recognizable shape. Conan Doyle suddenly knew who was behind the reanimated corpses … and where precisely he would find him.

  CHAPTER 30

  CHASING MONSTERS

  Conan Doyle stepped through the main gates of Waterloo Station footsore and weary. Impossibly dense fog had stalled the train two miles from the station, forcing him to abandon the carriage and walk the tracks the rest of the way. He had a satchel thrown over his shoulder that contained his latest Casebook, as well as his Webley revolver and a full box of shells. Lost in his own turmoiled thoughts, Conan Doyle failed to spot the looming figure of a large man until it stepped from the
fog in front of him.

  “Arthur.”

  “Oscar?”

  For once, Wilde was dressed in a rather ramshackle fashion. His wild mane of chestnut hair was disheveled. He had not shaved and his eyes looked bleary and bloodshot from lack of sleep.

  “My boy has been taken,” he said in dull and disbelieving tones.

  “What?”

  “Vyvyan…” His voice was utterly bereft. “… snatched before our eyes … by … dear God help me … by that … creature!”

  At the news a giddy weakness flashed through Conan Doyle.

  “Vyvyan, too?” He gripped Wilde’s arm. “Miss Leckie was abducted this morning. And by the same soulless devil we encountered the other night.”

  “What are we to do, Arthur?” Wilde fretted. “What are we to do? We must summon the police! We must contact your diminutive friend from the palace, Mister Riddle. I will roust the old biddy Victoria from her bed if need be. My darling boy has been kidnapped!”

  “I’m afraid we cannot wait for the police. We must seize the initiative. Our enemies are ahead of us. Remember today’s date and all that 13/13 business. The revolution, if there is to be one, will start within hours. The authorities will no doubt be overwhelmed.”

  “What shall we do? Where shall we find them?”

  Conan Doyle dipped in a pocket and withdrew the cogwheel, holding it up for Wilde to see. “Does this look familiar?”

  “The gear you found at Tarquin Hogg’s home?”

  “No, but its double. This fell out of Kingsley’s broken toy—the one I had mended at Jedidiah’s Emporium.”

  “I fail to understand.”

  “I now believe that our friend Jedidiah is behind the monster. If you recall we both gave him our calling cards. Cards that bore our home addresses. Very convenient for the kidnappers.”

  “Dash it all! You’re right, Arthur. So what do we do?”

  “We go looking for answers. Our first stop must be the Emporium of Mechanical Marvels.”

  “But however shall we find our way? This blasted fog has brought the capital to a standstill. The omnibuses do not run. I could not locate a hansom and was obliged to walk all the way from Tite Street. Since I arrived here the fog has been steadily thickening. I doubt I could find my way home in this miasma.”

  Both men stiffened at a jovial laugh that came from somewhere in the swirling gray.

  “Foggy is it, gents?” a Cockney voice announced from the shadows beside the empty newspaper kiosk. “I wondered why it was so quiet about.”

  Although he was only a few feet away, Conan Doyle and Wilde had to step closer before they made out the owner of the voice. Standing in his usual spot beside the newspaper kiosk was the Crimean war veteran and his tray of pennants. Tendrils of fog swirled about him, licking the black lenses of glasses behind which no vision was ever perceived.

  But in the face of blindness, Conan Doyle suddenly knew how they would see their way.

  * * *

  The Scottish author kept a hand on the veteran’s epauletted shoulder while he and Wilde linked arms. With the veteran’s cane tap tapping the curbstone, they navigated slowly but steadily through the murky maze of London roads in a fog so total that street signs were invisible from more than two feet away. Twenty minutes later, they fetched up outside Jedediah’s Emporium of Mechanical Marvels.

  “Well done, Sam,” Wilde congratulated.

  “Yes,” Conan Doyle added. “Without your assistance we would have been lost after the first street.”

  The shop was locked up tight just like all the businesses they passed; a CLOSED sign hung in the window. Conan Doyle took the Casebook from his satchel, scribbled a note, and then tore the page out and pressed it into the blind veteran’s hands.

  “We need one more favor, Sam. Detective Blenkinsop lives close by, on Anglesey Street. We need you to deliver this note and then fetch him here. Do you think you could find the address?”

  “Anglesey Street?” The veteran scratched his stubbly chin. “Wot’s the number?”

  “Forty-two.”

  “However shall he read the house number?” Wilde asked.

  But the veteran didn’t need to see, he had his own way of navigating the city.

  “Number forty-two? The lady wot lives in the bottom flat has a yappy little dog called Bonzo. I usually tosses it a biscuit when it comes sniffing about me feet. Don’t you worry, I can find it, no bother.”

  The veteran turned and began tapping his way toward Anglesey Street. He had gone barely ten feet when he vanished from sight.

  Conan Doyle turned to Wilde. “I noticed from your walk you seem a little stiff.”

  Wilde grunted a laugh. “Stiff? After our adventure on the Thames the other night, a corpse in full rigor is more flexible.”

  The Scottish doctor unshouldered his satchel and opened it. He drew out a smoked glass medicine bottle and handed it to Wilde.

  “Medicine, Arthur?”

  “The laudanum you once asked for. Mixed with gin and cocaine.”

  “Sounds playful. But won’t it make us somewhat … sedated?”

  “Not with all the amphetamines I added. Go on, take a good swig, you will soon feel better. Probably better than you have ever felt in your life.”

  “Arthur, you dog!” Wilde smirked. “Am I at last being a bad influence upon you? You once said you didn’t dispense dangerous drugs.”

  “Only in an emergency. And this qualifies. After all we’ve been through and have yet to endure, we both need a restorative. Now go on, take your medicine as the doctor orders.”

  Wilde uncapped the bottle and took a long, Adam’s-apple-bobbing swig. He handed the bottle back to Conan Doyle, who did likewise. After a moment, Wilde commented, “Interesting, my face appears to have gone completely numb.”

  “It does have that side effect. Still, let us get on with the task at hand.” The two friends studied the darkened shop front. Wilde thumbed the door latch experimentally, but to no avail. “Locked,” he said, “and we have no key.”

  Conan Doyle reached into his satchel and drew out his Webley revolver. “Fortunately I brought a skeleton key with me.”

  “Good Lord! Won’t that fetch the police?”

  “A good thing if it did.” Conan Doyle dropped into a wide-legged stance, aiming the muzzle an inch from the lock. Anticipating shrapnel, he turned his face away and squeezed the trigger. BANG! Up close the shot was a thunderclap that ricocheted from the doorway, fell into the arms of the fog, and was quickly smothered.

  The bullet had neatly blown the lock out of the door. The shop bell tinkled as Conan Doyle shouldered his way inside. Wilde followed after, remarking, “I should think it’s pointless announcing our entrance after that.”

  “Keep your wits about you,” Conan Doyle warned. “Our resurrected friend might be lurking.”

  “Heavens, I wish you hadn’t said that.”

  The two men split up and crept about the shop. Looking. Listening. The space between shelves was unfathomably dark. Wilde struck a match only to yelp as a wild-eyed, toothy visage loomed from the darkness—the painted face of a rocking horse. Both circuited the shop and met up at the far wall where a sliver of yellow light gleamed beneath the parlor door. They paused on the threshold, listening.

  From within came a faint but steady click-click … click-click … click-click …

  Conan Doyle threw Wilde a baffled look and the Irishman volleyed it back. The Scottish author stood back and raised his pistol, then nodded to Wilde, who twisted the doorknob and flung the door wide. They expected an armed assailant, or Wilde’s kidnapped son and Miss Leckie tied to chairs. Instead, they found a domestic scene.

  The blond-haired boy sat in his bath chair, a blanket draped across his lap. As before, his head turned to follow the movement of the toy train. However, the toy locomotive had toppled from its track and lay on its side, a puddle of water seeping from the tiny boiler. In the nearby rocking chair, the lady in the coal-scuttle bonnet furious
ly knitted away, needles mechanically working: click-click … click-click … click-click … The scarf she was knitting spilled in folds at her feet, perhaps ten feet long and steadily growing.

  “I—I—I’m terribly sorry,” Conan Doyle started to say, but then his words shriveled in his throat. He and Wilde exchanged a mystified look and stepped closer. He touched the woman’s bonnet and it fell back to reveal an armature of wire forming a rough approximation of a human head. He lifted the blanket from the boy’s lap and found no legs: only a clockwork mechanism where the lower half of a body should have been.

  Both figures were lifelike automatons, robotically repeating the same action over and over again.

  “Good Lord,” Wilde breathed. “They are mere mechanisms, after all.”

  Conan Doyle picked up a framed photograph from an end table and showed it to Wilde. It was the photograph he had seen on their earlier visit: a pretty blond woman posed in front of a lake with her hand on the shoulder of a fair-haired young boy of perhaps four years old who stood clutching a windup battleship.

  “I believe these were the real models,” Conan Doyle said.

  Wilde raised his bushy eyebrows. “And what became of the originals?”

  “What indeed?” Conan Doyle shook his head grimly. “I suspect they are no longer with us. I believe these simulacrums are Jedidiah’s attempt at a replacement.”

  “How grotesque.”

  “I fear we are only just beginning to understand how twisted the mind of Jedidiah is.”

  At his words, realization flashed in Wilde’s eyes.

  “What is it, Oscar?”

  The Irish writer sighed and shook his head. “I am a complete fool!” He fixed Conan Doyle with a solemn look. “What was the name of Ozymandius’s estranged brother?”

  Conan Doyle thought a moment. “Solomon?”

  “Precisely. As a student of the classics, I am mortified that I failed to tumble to it sooner.”

  “Tumble to what?”

  “In the Book of Kings, Jedidiah is another name for Solomon.”

  “Ahhhhh! So after the accident with the torpedo, where his wife and son were killed—”