Conan Doyle pondered a moment. When the boiler ran dry it was entirely likely it would explode or catch fire. “Yes, I believe your concern is well founded. Still, a fire will give them something to contend with.” He fished in a coat pocket and pulled out the glass bottle of calcium carbide pellets. The hall table boasted a solitary vase holding freshly cut flowers that had somehow escaped the mayhem. He snatched out the vegetation, tossed it aside, and emptied the full bottle into it. The white pellets hit the water and erupted in a fury of frothing bubbles.
“What are you up to, Arthur?”
“Mischief. Should we encounter Mister DeVayne and his cronies, this may provide us with some fog of our own.”
A pair of masked servants ran into an entrance hall, mutely gesticulating with alarm.
“RUN!” Conan Doyle shouted at them. “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! IT’S GOING TO EXPLODE!”
The servants needed no further persuasion, and bolted through the front doors, leaving the two friends to move unimpeded through the house. With a growing pall of steam following behind, the two authors tramped the empty hallway until they reached the open doors to the great hall where Wilde had witnessed the orgy. A quick glance inside revealed some kind of meeting under way. Conan Doyle held the pistol ready and whispered, “Prepare yourself, Oscar.” And with that, the two friends burst into the hall, ready for anything …
… other than what they discovered.
Convened around a long table were all the faces they recognized from the newspaper clipping.
“The Fog Committee,” Conan Doyle breathed.
“Yes. And all quite dead.”
Shockingly, the cadre of high-powered politicos and industrial magnates, along with Edmund Burke, the commissioner of police, and the right honorable Judge Robert Jordan, sat slumped in their chairs, bodies relaxed in postures of death—heads hanging slackly, glazed eyes staring at nothing. Rufus DeVayne sat at the head of the table, host of the macabre dinner party, his head fallen to one side, eyes half-lidded, a trickle of green liquor dribbling from the corner of his mouth. Several of the Fog Committee had vomited in their last moments. Glutinous ropes of saliva trailed from the judge’s open mouth to the green syrup puddled on the table before him. The coal mine owner alone had managed to rise from his seat, but sprawled dead a foot from his toppled chair. Many cold dead fingers still gripped a glass holding dregs of the fatal green cocktail.
Conan Doyle set the gun down upon the table and felt at the judge’s throat. “Still warm. Death must have come upon them swiftly. The green liquor no doubt contains a poison of great efficacy.”
“But why? And why would DeVayne drink his own poison?”
A bottled-up laugh burst from somewhere, and suddenly DeVayne jerked upright in his seat, the rictus grin relaxing into a wicked smile. Conan Doyle grabbed for the gun but DeVayne lunged first and snatched it up. “Too slow, Doctor Doyle!” DeVayne cackled. He rose to his feet while keeping the gun leveled. “I know you’re asking yourself, how did he survive? Did he really take the poison? In fact, I drank two full glasses. But I have been taking small quantities of the poison for months to build up a resistance.”
“But why kill your fellow conspirators?” Conan Doyle asked.
“Who can be trusted in a conspiracy? They wanted me only as a figurehead. In the days after the revolution, I knew I would prove obsolete, disposable, an embarrassing reminder of the regime they had just overthrown. After any revolution, there comes a time when the revolutionaries turn upon each other, as during the days of The Terror. Besides, I no longer need them, and a dictatorship is far less messy to manage.”
“I care not what group of despots runs this country,” Wilde said. “You or the current rogues’ gallery. I came to get my boy back. Arthur came to get Miss Leckie. Return them to us and you can go about your sordid little revolution with no interference from us.”
DeVayne dropped back into his chair, sitting sideways, one leg dangling over the chair arm. He waved the pistol carelessly as he spoke. “I’m sorry, but you two are far too deeply involved. I trusted these fools more than I trust either of you, and I just killed them all. Besides, I have a special use for both the woman and your pretty young boy. They are waiting in my private dungeon right now. Oh, but don’t worry, I won’t kill them immediately. The rite of immortality requires the sacrifice of a virgin, and you absconded with my last two.”
“You monster!” Wilde spat. He lunged at DeVayne and Conan Doyle struggled to restrain him.
The marquess fixed Wilde with a pitying scowl. “Monster am I? Well, if it’s a monster you want, it’s a monster you shall have.” He raised his voice and called out, “Gentlemen, would you bring in our Italian friend. Mister Wilde and Doctor Doyle are anxious to become reacquainted.”
The double doors at the end of the hall opened and the two men entered pushing a wheeled version of the restraining chair. Conan Doyle recognized Dr. Lamb immediately, but gasped aloud when he saw the second figure: a frock-coated gentleman in a stovepipe hat. “Ozymandius Arkwright!” he hissed. “I knew he was somehow implicated in all this—” But then the words died in the Scotsman’s throat. As the figure approached, he saw that it was not Ozymandius, but Jedidiah, the toy maker and owner of the Emporium, transformed by his attire into an eerie echo of his square-jawed brother.
“Evidently Ozymandius lied,” Wilde muttered. “His brother Solomon clearly did not die that day.”
Pinioned in the restraining chair was the corpse of the Italian valet, hanging slack and lifeless in its cage of iron bands. DeVayne left his seat and strode over to join them.
“I am the one who brought these two geniuses together. As I once said to you, Mister Wilde, in the new regime men such as these will be lauded as gods. Unfortunately, neither you nor Mister Doyle will live to see that day.” He turned to the engineer. “Solomon, I believe our friends need a demonstration of our improved assassin.”
DeVayne eyed both of them cruelly. “You were lucky to escape the first time. We discovered your little trick with the photograph. But this time I will ensure that the creature fully imprints upon you both. I shall tell it you murdered Vicente’s sister. The animal drives of hatred and rage are far stronger than the weak human notions of love and sentiment, as you will discover when the monster’s hand plunges through your ribcage and rips out your heart.” He nodded at Solomon. “Begin the resurrection.”
“One question, Solomon,” Conan Doyle called out. “What do you hope to gain by all this death and destruction? Will killing the queen somehow bring your family back?”
The gray-haired man in the black stovepipe regarded Conan Doyle a moment and sneered with derision. “The queen, sir? Shall I tell about our beloved monarch? I created a war-winning weapon: a guided torpedo that could destroy a warship from a mile away. The nose of the torpedo was fitted with a glass window. Inside was a pigeon trained to recognize the silhouette of a warship and steer toward it by pecking at metal paddles. But on the day of the demonstration, some fool released a flock of doves to welcome the queen. The pigeon saw the shadow of the doves on the surface of the water. Instinct took over from training and the pigeon turned to follow the flock. Dozens were killed. I saw my wife and beloved child go down before my eyes.” Solomon Arkwright’s chin quivered; his eyes filled with hot tears that melted before a glare of burning hatred. “But you know what the irony is?” He shook his head bitterly. “The accident fnished us as weapon makers. But not because of the people killed. Not because of the death of my wife and child. But because of the pigeon. The great animal lover Victoria was horrified that a weapon designed to save countless lives of British seamen required the sacrifice of a single bird. And so we were stricken from the list of weapons suppliers.”
Conan Doyle briefly wondered what was happening in the entrance hall and whether the servants had all fled the house. He decided to play for time. “Solomon,” he called out. “We have met your brother. We know what happened those many years ago. You suffered a terri
ble loss. But is what you are doing true to the memory of your loved ones?”
The engineer looked at Conan Doyle as if he were stupid. “Everything I do is for my family. I will revive their bodies … not just their memory.” Solomon’s head shook with a violent tremor.
Conan Doyle suddenly remembered the photograph of the Fog Committee. He had surmised that the figure in the stovepipe hat had deliberately turned his head to blur his own image. Now he understood the truth: it was the nervous tic the man had no doubt been left with after that tragic day when he saw his wife and child die before his eyes. Solomon Arkwright was a deeply traumatized man, but he might yet be reasoned with. “We have seen the bodies of your wife and son. They have deteriorated too far be revivified, no matter how clever your heart pump is.”
“The marquess’s magic will take up where our science leaves off.” Solomon’s words were raveled with desperation. “He has given me his solemn oath that we shall walk together again in this life.”
“Walk together? What, like that thing?” Wilde said, pointing to the dead man in the chair. “You will revive them as shambling monsters?”
“Shut up!” Solomon bellowed. “Shut up!”
The engineer spread open the monster’s shirt, revealing the brassy metal box. His fingers found and depressed the recessed plunger, which scratched a inner striker plate and ignited the carbide fuel. Soon they could hear the ascending hiss of water coming to a boil.
DeVayne and his two cronies stepped back behind the restraining chair, out of the monster’s field of view. The heart pump’s telltale sound filled the hall: wisssshthump … wisssssshthump … wissssssshthump …
Within minutes, the corpse began to quiver as hot blood pumped through cold flesh, dormant nerve endings fired, and limbs twitched. Then the creature stirred. It drew in a ragged breath and released a plume of steam.
DeVayne smiled as he watched. “Solomon has increased the steam engine’s output, raising the blood pressure to six times that of a normal human, bestowing the creature with unstoppable power.”
As the tissues engorged with blood, the thing in the chair seemed to inflate. Huge veins plumped on the face and neck and the skin darkened to the color of a sanguine bruise. Then, with a blood-chilling scream, the grizzled head rose up and the yellow eyes startled open.
The marquess leaned close to the gruesome head and purred into its ear: “The men you see before you are the cause of your suffering. They murdered your sister. Your soul will never know peace while they live. You must destroy Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle. Tear off their arms. Smash them. Peel the flesh from their bones. Crush and rend them utterly. Only then will you know peace. Only then will you be released from this prison of corrupt and stinking flesh you now inhabit.”
The monster began to writhe violently in the chair, an engine fueled by hatred. One iron band restraining an arm broke with a loud snap, and then another. The chair creaked and groaned as the monster rose to its feet, snapping the heavy timbers as if they were matchsticks. The monster stood erect, pausing a moment as if gathering momentum, the yellow eyes fixing upon the two friends, and then took a lunging step forward.
“Kill them!” DeVayne urged. “Kill! Kill! Ki—”
KAA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
His words were drowned by a thunderous explosion that blew in the doors and snuffed out the gaslights. Suits of armor toppled and crashed. A pall of dust fell from the rafters and mixed with the smoke and steam swirling in through the doorway to form a blinding fog. When the pall of dust and smoke finally cleared, Conan Doyle and Wilde had vanished.
So had the monster.
Dr. Lamb looked terror-struck. “What was that explosion?”
A masked servant ran by the doorway.
“Wait!” DeVayne shouted, but the servant had already vanished.
“What do we do now?” Solomon asked. “The two meddlers have escaped and the house is on fire.”
DeVayne thought a moment and said, “We must proceed with our plan. Wilde and his friend are as good as dead. The monster will track them unerringly.” He turned to Solomon. “You must find the creature and bring him back.” He handed over Conan Doyle’s revolver. “In the unlikely event he hasn’t already killed them, use this and make sure they’re dead. The doctor and I will be waiting in my landau. We cannot delay. We must be inside the gates of Buckingham Palace before Big Ben strikes thirteen.”
Meanwhile Conan Doyle and Wilde were running pell-mell through the hallways. “I told you to shut that steam thing down, Arthur.”
“Yes. It worked rather better than I’d hoped.” But in the next instant he was struck by a dread realization. “We must find the dungeon where Miss Leckie and Vyvyan are being held, before the fire becomes a conflagration!”
They paused at the foot of the grand staircase.
“Only stairs going up,” Conan Doyle said. “None going down.”
“This is a mock Tudor manor. It only has two floors.”
“Then where would the dungeon be?”
Wilde thought a moment and said, “When we were in his rooms, DeVayne said his dungeon was nearby.”
“Where are his rooms?”
“Somewhere on the upper floor. I’m not sure exactly.”
From down the smoky corridor came a dreadfully familiar sound: wisssssshthump … wisssssshthump.… Through the swirling smoke, they glimpsed the monster, stumping toward them.”
“Quickly, Arthur, up the stairs!”
The two friends vaulted up the staircase with Wilde leading the way. They turned right and hurried along the corridor.
“Which room?”
“Alas, I cannot recall.”
“So many rooms. So many doors. How shall we ever find them?”
“Perhaps they are somewhere near. Close enough to hear us if we shout.”
Both men began to shout aloud: “JEAN! VYVYAN. JEAN! VYVYAN!”
Conan Doyle paused to look behind. Smoke was chimneying up the staircase and spreading along the upper landing. The smoke swirled and the monster stepped out of it and slouched after them.
“The creature’s following us.”
They loped on, shouting at the top of their lungs. “VYVYAN! JEAN!”
Wilde grabbed Conan Doyle’s arm and dragged him to a standstill.
“What?”
“I hear singing,” Wilde said. He looked at Conan Doyle with a mystified expression. “It sounds like … an aria?”
Conan Doyle instantly recognized the singer. “It’s Jean. She is a classically trained mezzo-soprano. That’s her singing.”
“How apropos. I suppose, if I must die, at least I shall have a suitably operatic death. Here I am running through a burning manor pursued by a raging monster. And all to the accompaniment of an aria. Even Wagner could not stage such a drama.”
They followed Jean Leckie’s soaring voice to a large set of double doors and crashed through them.
“These are his rooms!” Wilde said. He dashed about, searching amongst the elaborate furniture and the four-poster bed; however, Vyvyan and Jean Leckie were nowhere to be seen. Conan Doyle slammed the bedroom doors shut and bolted them.
“I’m afraid that won’t keep it out for long.”
“Hardly.”
“Jean!” Conan Doyle shouted. “Keep singing.”
The silvery aria started up again.
Wilde pointed. “It’s coming from the wall, behind the print.”
He pointed to the print DeVayne had so lovingly described in the bookshop. Conan Doyle examined it and speculated, “It must conceal a door.”
“Then there must be a catch or handle somewhere,” Wilde said, hands exploring the edges of the frame.
“Don’t bother!” Conan Doyle pulled the small silver penknife from his pocket, swung out the sharp blade, and slashed through the canvas in a giant X pattern. He and Wilde tore loose the flapping canvas to reveal a dungeon door, massive and heavy, bound together with iron straps and dozens of black rivets. Wilde g
rabbed the black iron ring and yanked, but to no avail.
“Damnation! It’s locked. We must batter it down.”
“With what?”
Wisssshthump … wisssssshthump … wisssssshthump …
The double doors suddenly burst inward from a blow. The stench of decaying flesh preceded the monster into the room. It paused a moment to fix them both with its ghastly, yellow-eyed stare.
Conan Doyle grabbed the statue of a small bronze satyr from a nearby table and brandished it like a club. But to his surprise, Wilde pushed him aside and stepped toward the monster. He dropped to his knees before it and clasped both hands together in a gesture of supplication. The beast stumbled toward him and raised a clublike arm, coiled to smash. But then Wilde addressed it in fluent Italian, speaking in an impassioned voice, smiting his own chest from time to time. The beast stood frozen. It seemed to be listening, its facial muscles rippling with an inner struggle as the last fragments of Vicente’s humanity warred with the resurrected monster he had been fashioned to be. Wilde finally finished and the monster looked down upon him, as if unsure what to do.
“What did you say to it?”
“I asked him to save my little boy. I implored him in the name of his sister and all the loved ones in Italy he will never see again.”
Suddenly, the monster lowered its arm. It looked from Wilde to the door and back. And then the face tightened into a snarling grimace; a rising growl roared from the lungs. Wilde reared back, anticipating a deathblow. But instead the creature shambled forward and struck the door a resounding blow. The great door shook, but held. Another blow and another. An iron strap tore loose and clanged to the ground. More blows. The wood cracked and split in places. The monster backed away and then charged the door, smashing into it with such force that the hinges tore loose from the frame and the door toppled inward. The monster backed away and Conan Doyle and Wilde rushed into the chamber.
The room inside resembled the dungeon in the print, although the cell was faux-painted plaster, not stone. Torture devices hung from the walls. Gaslights disguised as torches illuminated the windowless space.
The Dead Assassin Page 30