"Who? Oh yeah, him. Could be he got out." Dimmick shrugged, as if it was of no particular concern to him whether a man was alive or dead, whether he had or had not murdered him.
They rode for a while in silence and darkness, except for the hooves of the horses and the crack of Lewis"s whip, and Atwood"s mutterings, which Arthur took to be a form of ritual preparation. Dimmick absent-mindedly tapped his stick on his knee.
"This is awful, Atwood."
"He must needs go that the devil drives, Shaw."
"Devils. Quite right. Devils indeed. Now we"re consorting with-listen, Atwood, why can"t your Hidden b.l.o.o.d.y Masters help us?"
"Be quiet, Shaw. I have to prepare myself. You should be ready, too. No help will be coming from that quarter."
"No-I dare say not. There"s no such b.l.o.o.d.y thing, is there? There"s just you and Jupiter and Mr Sun; madmen the lot of you, and I"m the maddest of all for listening to you. I should take Josephine to a doctor."
"I"ll have Lewis stop for you if you want to walk home. Otherwise, be silent."
Arthur stewed for a while in silence.
Lewis called m.u.f.fled commands. The coach came to a stop.
Harley Street was silent. A weak moon, thick clouds. A light here and there in an upper window suggested doctors working late into the night over studies or experiments. The heat of the day was long gone. Something in the air threatened rain. Lewis stayed with the coach on the corner. He shuttered his lantern, rolled a cigarette, and hunched against the cold.
No lights in Thorold"s windows. It was a dark and nondescript edifice of brick, indistinguishable at night from any of its neighbours, except that a plaque by the door identified Thorold by name and as a consulting physician at St. Bartholomew"s Hospital.
Atwood gestured at the door, and Dimmick stepped forward, hunching over the lock, seeming to use his stick as a sort of crowbar. The door opened with a sickening crunch and Dimmick led the way inside.
To their right was a waiting room. Shelves of heavy tomes, presumably medical, and paintings of the sea.
A sound of footsteps, then a cough, somewhere in the darkness ahead. The glow of a light coming from under a door. Arthur froze, turned to bolt back out into the street. Atwood put a hand on his shoulder and pointed to the waiting-room. Dimmick took off his hat.
Light filled the hall. Thorold emerged from his pantry, nudging the door closed with one slippered foot. He cut an unimpressive figure, and at first Arthur took him for a servant. He was barefoot, in a nightshirt and cap, with a pair of large horn-rimmed spectacles. He carried a candle in one hand and a plate of biscuits in the other. He turned, dropped the plate, and stared in wide-eyed shock at the invaders, lifting up the candle as if he thought they must surely be a trick of the light, and a better angle might dispel them.
In the light of the candle Dr Thorold looked pale and clammy, as if he"d been awoken by a nightmare.
"You!" Thorold stared at Atwood. "You b.l.o.o.d.y lunatic, what are you doing here?"
"Thorold!" Atwood made a gesture with his left hand, holding up fingers like crooked horns. "Stop, Thorold. You"re-"
Thorold blew out his candle, dropped it, turned, and ran. Atwood ran after him, but in the dark he stepped on the candle as it rolled underfoot, and he fell. Arthur stooped to help him up.
"Stop him! Stop him-Dimmick, where"s Dimmick?"
Dimmick charged, jumping over Atwood, holding his hat to his head and brandishing his stick. Atwood and Arthur ran along behind him, through Thorold"s parlour, where Arthur banged into a looming black grand piano, and Atwood was startled by his own suddenly moonlit white-faced reflection in a mirror. When they entered Thorold"s study-a dusty, dark dead-end cluttered with books and papers, stuffed owls and weasels, jars and skulls and flasks of G.o.d-knows-what-Dimmick already had Thorold cornered, his stick under the old man"s jaw. Thorold"s spectacles had come loose from one ear and dangled precariously on the end of his nose.
"You will answer my questions," Atwood said.
Thorold glared. "This is common burglary, Atwood."
"Hah! Then you admit you know who I am."
"Of course I know who you are, Your Lordship. And is this creature Dimmick? I know him by reputation-but Good Lord, look at him. What a specimen. Leave my house, Atwood."
"You murdered a colleague of mine, and you"re in league with my-my enemies."
"I don"t know what you"re talking about, Your Lordship. Of course I follow your work-we share an interest in the new science, after all. Mine is an amateur interest, but of course medicine occupies so much of my time. I knew your father, once upon a time. A great man-"
"Enough!"
Dimmick jabbed Thorold"s chin and he fell silent.
"Now, answer my questions, doctor, and truthfully. By Mercury I command it, and Ishtar, and the Holy Ghost. Oriston, Soter, Eloy, Tetragrammaton..."
Dimmick relaxed his stick to permit Thorold to remove his dangling spectacles. Thorold ignored Atwood"s chant, glanced at Arthur, and asked who he was. Arthur said nothing.
Thorold polished his spectacles with his sleeve, muttering.
"I"ll ask again. Who are you, young man, and why are you in my house, and why are you in league with Martin Atwood? What has he promised you? You have made a very foolish choice, my friend-Atwood"s path will lead to your ruination as a magician and as a man."
"... Zeboth, Adon, Elion, Tetragrammaton!" Atwood said. "Name your allies, Doctor Thorold."
Thorold quite casually tossed his spectacles to Arthur, who blinked in surprise and couldn"t help but catch them. Instantly he found himself dizzy and stumbling-it seemed that the room had spun. He thought for a moment that he"d somehow tripped and fallen-where had that bookshelf come from, and where had the desk gone?
He realised with a sickening sensation that he was now standing where Thorold had been standing a moment before, and Thorold had taken his place on the other side of his study. It had only taken an instant, and now all four men in the room were moving again, but Thorold was too close to his desk to stop. He s.n.a.t.c.hed up a small gla.s.s jar, and gulped most of its contents down before Dimmick"s stick knocked it from his hand. His face twisted in pain and he fell to the floor.
Atwood shouted "Name them!"
Thorold sprawled, thrashing his naked hairy legs. He coughed out names: Backhouse, Carroll, Sandys. Atwood repeated his command and Thorold coughed out Podmore, and then laughed, and then roared senselessly, jerking and twisting as if his neck and his spine were breaking-as if he were being broken in the jaws of a great invisible cat-and his eyes rolled up in agony. His limbs shook and his hair stood up, thick and bristly.
Thorold jumped to his feet. He seemed taller now: long-limbed, wild-eyed, long-toothed. Long hairy fingers grabbed Atwood"s shirt and lifted him, struggling and uttering futile words of power; then Thorold threw Atwood into the door-frame. Atwood cried out and slid onto the floor.
Arthur dropped Thorold"s spectacles and looked about for a weapon. Nothing obvious presented itself.
Dimmick picked up a large gla.s.s jar and dashed it on Thorold"s head. Dimmick"s stick appeared to have been snapped in two somehow while Arthur wasn"t looking. Blood and gla.s.s everywhere-Thorold staggered but returned to the fray, with vigour that would have been remarkable in a man a third of his age. He seized Dimmick by the throat and the two of them wrestled, reeling from side to side of the room, knocking books off shelves and shattering gla.s.s. Occasional moonlight illuminated them. Dimmick b.u.t.ted Thorold"s head, drenching the scene in fresh blood. The doctor howled, lifted Dimmick, and hurled him bodily into a shelf. Dimmick fell to the floor and rolled in broken gla.s.s, swearing mightily.
Atwood crawled towards Arthur and crouched in the doorway at his side. He was winded, and bleeding from a cut on his head.
Thorold ran for the door-almost down on all fours now, loping-and Arthur tackled him. They rolled together, sliding on smooth parquet into the wall. Somehow Arthur ended up underneath the old man, whose eyes were yellow, whose breath was foul, whose teeth glittered. Arthur held on to a hank of his hair for dear life, scared to let go.
Dimmick struck Thorold on the back of the head with a candlestick, then hauled him off Arthur, grunting, hup, hup, hup, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, hup.
Atwood, on his feet again, chanted some sort of gibberish, one hand commandingly raised. What effect this had, if any, Arthur couldn"t tell. Dimmick and Thorold, b.l.o.o.d.y and tattered, bashed each other against one wall, then another. Then in the next sliver of moonlight Dimmick had somehow got up on Thorold"s shoulders, the better to bash at his head and gouge at his eyes. Thorold bit Dimmick"s wrist. They stumbled, writhed. Dimmick kicked Thorold"s leg. Thorold howled and fell. Bone glinted. Dimmick kicked again, and again, and again. Then, as Thorold writhed on the floor, Dimmick went for the candlestick again.
Arthur averted his eyes from the final blow.
In the silence that followed, Arthur could still hear the echoes of the struggle-thump thump thump. It took him a while to realise that it was his heart.
Atwood re-entered the study.
"Well done, Mr Dimmick."
Dimmick swayed. "Sir."
"Fortunate that I was able to contain his power."
"Yes," Arthur said. "Well b.l.o.o.d.y done, all of us. G.o.d forgive us."
IV: The Hour of Venus
By Arthur"s reckoning, it was now the hour of Venus, which was suitable for the calling up of spirits, the learning of secrets, and the resolution of mysteries.
They searched Dr Thorold"s premises. Atwood had uttered some words that he said would delay the arrival of the police, or nosy neighbours. Arthur found bandages, and bound Dimmick"s wounds as best he knew how, while Dimmick cursed at him. Atwood collected all the papers he could find in Thorold"s study, and a handful of books.
"Thieving from the dead," Arthur said. "Good G.o.d."
"These may hold the key to the conspiracy. If you lack the will to do what must be done-"
"I swear to you, Atwood-" Arthur made a fist, then let it go. "Never mind. I"ll search upstairs."
Upstairs, he found no evidence that Thorold had any family, for which small mercy he gave thanks. There was an empty maid"s room, its window swinging open over the garden. No other servants. Thorold lived frugally for a man of his station. Had lived. He"d liked photographs, and paintings of dogs, and he had a large collection of books in French and German. He was-had been-untidy, in the way of scholars and elderly bachelors (not to mention wolves), and his rooms upstairs were full of heaps of papers and books arranged in ways that no doubt had made sense only to him, with cups and plates and old bits of toast interspersed among them. Medical papers. Accounts of expenses and income. A lecture on hospital administration. Some correspondence with the university. A quiet life, and no more than a moderately eccentric one. It did not seem like the house of a murderer, or like the lair of something worse.
When Arthur came downstairs again, Atwood was searching through the cabinets in Thorold"s study.
"The maid may have fled by the window," Arthur said. "I wouldn"t be at all surprised if she goes to the police. Atwood, are you listening?"
"Yes. What clues did you find to the nature of the conspiracy?"
"Conspiracy? Not a thing."
Arthur glanced through the door at the lanky thing that lay dead on the floor, and shuddered.
"I don"t know," Atwood said.
"Hmm?"
"Doctor Thorold"s transformation. I"ve never seen anything like it. Old magic, made new.... I wish we"d been able to save some of that fluid."
"Thank G.o.d we didn"t!"
Dimmick slouched by the front door, smoking a cigarette. Arthur advised him to leave his bandages alone. Dimmick swore at him.
The door to Thorold"s bas.e.m.e.nt was locked. It didn"t respond to any of Atwood"s mystical pa.s.ses and muttered incantations. Dimmick limped up, kicked it open, then went back to sitting and smoking by the front door.
At the foot of the stairs there were four cages, containing some dogs and a much-abused ape. Arthur thought it was a chimpanzee. Whatever it was, it awakened Atwood"s mercurial sympathies. Tears came to his eyes, and he insisted on giving the creature a merciful death. A job for Dimmick, naturally.
There was another door, not locked. The windowless room beyond was full of a terrible bitter-sweet odour. Apart from the odour, the room contained bookshelves, cabinets, unlit gaslamps. In an alcove in a corner Arthur found a collection of sketches and photographs of Augustus Mordaunt, the late Duke of Suss.e.x, whose mysterious death on the night of the storm had kept the police busy for the past half-year, and the newspapers occupied in ghoulish speculation. Words in heavy gothic lettering circled the dead man"s face: the names of angels and demons and fairies, drippings of wax and blood and tar. On the floor of the cabinet was a dagger, and a gla.s.s jar with a dried black fluid encrusted on it. This, Arthur supposed, was a clue. He called Atwood over.
"Ah," Atwood said. "Well, well."
"Can you explain this, Atwood?"
"As a matter of fact, I can. I suppose you know that the late Duke had an interest in the occult? For a very long time. I had approached him regarding the activities of the Company. He was very interested, though somewhat alarmed. He was terribly ill, you know. Who knows what we might find out in the spheres, I said-who knows what treasures, what powers, what medicines ... He began to support us. With money, that is. Gracewell always says that the Engine should pay for itself one day, but in the meantime I find I have to shoulder rather more expense than I would like. I"ve had to sell off some properties. Anyway, there it is; you can see why my enemies would do what they did."
"By G.o.d, Atwood-is everyone in London a magician?"
"Fashion. Lately there has been a quite regrettable fashion. Men of power, greedy for more power over this world, take to the study as if it were a business."
"And you?"
"My sights are set higher. Knowledge, Shaw, not power."
Atwood sc.r.a.ped the wax and sniffed at his fingernail. He poked at the gla.s.s jar, being careful not to touch the fluid. He began to explain the ritual Thorold had employed, the forces he had summoned to inflict ill-health, fevers, bad luck, trembling, and falling. He paced the room, candle held high, guessing where Thorold and his co-conspirators had sat to perform this horrible procedure.
"A minimum of half a dozen, Shaw. A minimum. If only they"d left their cards, ha-ha. On the night of the storm-the very same night, while we were otherwise occupied-a blow from two directions at once. They are schemers, these people..."
Arthur stopped listening. He"d seen enough to suppose that whatever awful things Atwood was saying were true, or true enough. He felt that there should be a moment of silence.
So they"d solved the mystery of the Duke"s murder, where Scotland Yard had failed; and the Times; and Arthur Conan Doyle; and a hundred psychics, letter-writers, and busy-bodies. But what now? They couldn"t tell the police what they"d done. They couldn"t tell anyone. No one would credit it if they did. So order and sanity couldn"t be restored, and the mystery was unsolvable after all, and things would only get worse. He would have preferred not to know.
Atwood set the pictures on fire, and smashed the gla.s.s.
"Did you know?"
"Hmm?"
"Atwood-did you know? Is that why you wanted to come here?"
"We avenged two murders tonight. I would think your conscience could be at ease."
"Did you know?"
"The spirits gave me an inkling. Though I wish they could have given me more warning of Thorold"s ... tendencies. Let that be a lesson to you about spirits."
"And how does this help us find Josephine?"
"One less enemy." Atwood paced around the room in circles, stopping sometimes, as if imagining his enemies seated for their horrible ritual. "And how else should our investigation proceed? Nothing in magic is by the direct method. Yet now I begin-perhaps-to perceive the nature of our enemy. The shape of their circle. We have shed a little light upon the dark."
"We"re back where we were."
"Then tomorrow we may begin again."