The List of Seven Read online

  “Is that true?”

  “Not really, but I strongly advise you to adopt this attitude at once, or things will not go well for you. By the way, may I have this copy of my book? I should like to study it. They appear to have penetrated the skin and altered its molecular structure. If this is true, it is not good.”

  He handed her the book, gulping back the impulse to ask her why? She studied the book for a moment before placing it in her satchel and turning to him for another long look.

  “When things appear darkest, you have friends unknown or unseen—”

  “Professor Sacker—”

  “The Professor Sacker you have met tonight is a scholar of ancient Mystery Cults. He is a sympathetic colleague of ours, an academic with no direct knowledge of your lamentable situation. The fact that the man who contacted you used his name is of great significance, which I encourage you to investigate.”

  “What should I do?”

  “What should you do? That is a most excellent question,” she said seriously. “What do you think you should do?”

  Doyle thought for a moment.

  “I think I should visit Lady Nicholson’s estate. Topping.”

  “A sound idea. You are in the grip of a most interesting dilemma, Doctor. I sincerely hope our paths may cross again someday. Do you have copies of all my books?”

  “As a matter of fact, they were lost in the—”

  “Please see the boy outside. He will provide you with new editions at absolutely no cost. I trust they may prove useful to you.”

  She turned away and began packing her satchel. Doyle suddenly remembered the talisman sitting in his pocket.

  “Excuse me, Madame…but what do you make of this?” and he showed her the metallic eye Sacker’s imposter had given him. She took it from him, looked it over, tried to bend it, then bit down on it. It bore no marks, which drew a nod of approval.

  “This is very good. If I were you, I would wear it around my neck.”

  She handed it back and closed up her satchel.

  “But what does it mean?”

  “It is a symbol.”

  “A symbol of what?” he asked, somewhat exasperated.

  “It would take too long to explain. I must go now. I would invite you to supper, but I don’t wish to unduly alarm the Professor. His health is frail, and we need him to finish his work before he passes on, as he is scheduled to do so later in the year.”

  “Scheduled?”

  “Come, come, Doctor. There is more on heaven and earth and so on. Shakespeare was an extremely advanced Adept. I trust you’ve read him extensively.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, the English educational system. Give us a kiss. A blessing on your head, Doctor Doyle. Do svidan’ya.”

  A swirl of her cloak and she was out the door. Doyle’s head swam. He spotted a large book on the floor beside her satchel, picked it up, and followed her.

  She was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the young clerk. A short stack of her other works had been left behind on the table in the empty Grange Hall. He looked at the cover of the larger book in his hand.

  Psychic Self-Defense, by H. P. Blavatsky.

  chapter eight

  JACK SPARKS

  NOW I’M REALLY ON THE GRIDDLE, DOYLE THOUGHT: Blavatsky confirms that assassins are indeed on my trail—cold comfort there—and no practical help forthcoming from her, since she’s clearly more interested in pursuing her own mysteriously imperative agenda. Who would have thought that after all this danger, one would place so low in her hierarchy of spiritual distress?

  But then what did I expect, really, that she’d drop everything and rally to my defense? And if she had, what help could she actually have given? A middle-aged gunnysack of a woman with common personal habits and a cadre of effete, intellectual bookworms? I don’t envy the poor buggers she’s bustling off to rescue in my stead, I can tell you that. A stem talking-to and a bottle of vodka aren’t what’s in order here, no sir: What I need’s a heavily armed squadron of steely dragoons standing picket, sabers at the ready, ready to lay down their lives.

  He was walking again through the commons toward King’s Parade.

  My flat ruined, Petrovitch murdered—what will Leboux make of that when the body turns up?—prostitutes carved up in the street like a dog’s breakfast, a child kidnapped, his mother killed before my eyes as sorcerers lure me into ambush, rescued by impostors, misdirected into a wild-goose chase where I’m nearly meat for some stone Gothic basilisk. I never did like Cambridge, breeding ground for ruling-class contempt, perpetuating the whole rotten system—easy, Doyle: Let’s not drag in the whole litany of a lifetime’s social complaints. One calamity at a time, old man.

  First things first: lodging for the night. Not much money left. No one to contact for help: Blavatsky had been his best hope in that department. Her damned books felt like an anchor in his bag. The vanity of the woman; ask for help, she weighs you down with her collected works and flees the country.

  He had a plan, after all: Topping. Now what does one say to the husband? “Delighted to meet you Lord Nicholson—Yes, most unusual weather for this time of year, your for-sythia are thriving beyond all reasonable expectation. By the way, were you aware that your wife, Caroline, and her brother had their throats cut and brains bashed out in a squalid London tenement just the other day? No? Yes, sorry to say; I happened to be in the room at the time—”

  All right, there was time enough to consider what his approach should be before he got there. The task at hand was getting through the night ahead of him alive.

  An inn. Good. That’s a start.

  Doyle decided not to leave his bag in the room, although he felt secure enough to leave his coat on the bed. He took a seat by the fire in the public room and kept the bag in contact with his leg at all times. A half-dozen other patrons occupied the cozy snuggery: two elderly, donnish-looking men, a young married couple, and two solitary travelers, neither of whom in mien or aspect appeared to pose any threat.

  Doyle nursed a hot buttered rum and studied the metallic eye. He considered Blavatsky’s advice—perhaps I should make an amulet, what harm could come from it? Something caught his eye: the Indian woman again, ascending the stairs. Staying the night, apparently. Came up for the lecture. Probably returning to London tomorrow.

  The false Sacker came back into his mind. He had presented himself as friend and rescuer but if that was truly the case, why give a false name? Why that particular one? Couldn’t he just as easily be in league with the villains, insinuating himself into Doyle’s confidence for some more sinister purpose? For all Doyle knew, during their carriage ride he might have been cheek by jowl with the Grand Master of the Brotherhood.

  The wind came up and rattled branches against the window. A gust kicked up the fire, shaking Doyle out of his reverie. The mug was empty in his hand. He heard horses nickering uneasily outside. He discovered with some surprise he was alone in the room. How much time had passed? Eleven-thirty. He’d been sitting there for nearly an hour.

  With a howl of wind, the front door flew open, gaslight guttered in the rush of air, the room darkened, and in strode a towering figure in black, face obscured by a high-collared cloak and tricornered hat. The man banged impatiently on the desk and looked around. Doyle obeyed an impulse to pull back behind the chair and avoid the intruder’s eye, although it denied him a view of the man’s face. Doyle chanced another look in time to see the proprietor scurry out from a back room: The smile instantly vanished from the innkeeper’s face. Although Doyle could not discern what the stranger was saying, the fulminating, guttural intent of his tone was unmistakably menacing.

  Picking up his bag, Doyle discreetly made his way to the back stair, making certain the man at the desk did not see him. As he ascended, the only distinct words he heard were the intruder’s specific request to view the register, and he knew intuitively that the man was looking for him.

  “Right. Retrieve my coat from the room, and I’ll be on my wa
y,” he murmured to himself as he moved down the hallway and fumbled the key into the lock. Take some small comfort, Doyle; if they’ve come for you again, at least this time it’s in recognizably human form.

  He entered and saw that the window on the far wall was flapping open, the rain that was just starting to fall splashing in over the sill. He moved to close it, and as he reached outside for the latch, the sight on the street below sent a chill crackling to the base of his spine.

  Standing at the inn’s entrance was the same pitch-black carriage they’d seen on the night of the séance. A figure in a black-cowled cape held the reins of the four black stallions. Doyle pulled the window in toward him, the figure looked up at the movement, the cowl fell away, and Doyle saw the gray hood covering the figure’s face. It pointed at him and emitted its deafening high-pitched wail.

  Doyle slammed the window shut and reached into his bag for the pistol and hustled to the door. Moving down the hall, he heard cries of pain from below; they were tormenting the poor innkeeper—bastards, I’ll fill them with holes—and he was fixed to hurtle downstairs to confront them when he heard a rush of footsteps on their way up. And another sound…

  “Psst.” Where was that coming from?

  “Psst.” At the end of the hallway, the Indian woman stood in a half-open doorway beckoning to Doyle with a crooked finger. Doyle hesitated.

  “Hurry, for God’s sake, Doyle,” the woman said. In a man’s voice.

  Doyle ran for the door and entered as behind him the attackers reached the floor he was on and headed toward his room at the far end of the hall. The room’s other occupant was removing the long veil, and Doyle for the first time saw this person’s face.

  “You…”

  “Help me out of these clothes,” said the man he’d known as Professor Armond Sacker.

  Doyle gaped at him. The sounds of heavy blows and splintering wood ran down the corridor.

  “Don’t be a silly pudding, Doyle, they just discovered you’re not in your room.”

  Doyle assisted as the man stripped off the padded sari, revealing the same black outfit he’d worn the night they’d met, and quickly toweled off the brown makeup on his face.

  “You’ve been following me,” was all Doyle could manage.

  “They’ve found you much faster than I anticipated, my fault entirely,” the man said, tossing the towel aside. “Is your pistol loaded?”

  Doyle checked the chambers. “No, I’d completely forgotten.”

  The sound of banging on doors, and the startled cries of the floor’s other occupants, was moving toward them down the hall.

  “I suggest you hurry, old man,” the man said coolly, kicking the sandals off his feet and pulling on a pair of soft leather boots. “We’ll have to take the roof.”

  Rummaging through his bag for the box of ammunition, Doyle heard a creak and looked up to see one of the gray hoods opening the window above the bed. Grabbing the first solid object he could find, he reared back and hurled it at the creature, hitting it dead square in the center of the hood, knocking it away from the window. They heard a clatter of roof shingle, then a heavy impact below.

  The man picked up the projectile from beneath the window.

  “Good old Blavatsky,” he said, with a brief admiring glance, handing the edition of Psychic Self-Defense back to Doyle. “Off we go then.”

  Pocketing the veil he’d worn earlier, the false Sacker climbed through the window. Doyle finished loading the pistol, hoisted out his bag, accepted the man’s offered hand, and joined him on the roof.

  “You have a great deal of explaining to do,” Doyle said to him.

  “Right with you, Doyle,” he said. “What say we first put some distance between ourselves and these bloodless fiends, fair enough?”

  Doyle nodded. The man started away, straddling the roof’s spine, Doyle following closely, each step on the rain-soaked shingles perilously slick. The storm howled around them.

  “What do I call you?” Doyle asked.

  “Sorry? Frightfully hard to hear out here.”

  “I said, what’s your name?”

  “Call me Jack.”

  They made their way to the rear edge of the roof. The street twenty feet below was empty. Jack put two fingers into his mouth and whistled loudly enough to pierce the wind.

  “I say, Jack…”

  “Yes, Doyle.”

  “Your whistling like that, is that such a good idea?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I mean, their hearing seems awfully acute by my reckoning.”

  “Acute doesn’t quite cover it.”

  They waited. Jack unfolded the veil from his pocket, which Doyle noticed was nearly ten feet long and heavily weighted at either end. Doyle heard movement behind them; another gray hood appeared, loping down toward them over the crown of the roof.

  “I’ll wait till it’s a bit closer, if you don’t mind,” Doyle said, raising the pistol and drawing a bead on the figure.

  “I wouldn’t wait too long.”

  “I’d be happy to let you try—”

  “No, no—”

  “Because if you think you can do better—”

  “I’m brimming with confidence in you, old boy—”

  The hood was no more than ten feet away. Doyle fired. The creature, incredibly, dodged the bullet and continued to slowly advance.

  “Not trying to be critical, you understand. It’s just,” Jack said, beginning to twirl the scarf above his head in a tight circle, “they’re a good deal quicker than they first appear. Better to lay down a dense field of fire and hope they dodge into it.”

  Doyle fired again; the creature slipped left, the bullet ripped through its shoulder, it staggered, righted itself, and still came on. Wiping the rain from his eyes, Doyle aimed down the sight of the gun.

  “These things,” Doyle said, “they’re not quite alive, are they? In the traditional sense.”

  “Something like that,” Jack said, and let fly the scarf. It whistled through the air and caught the creature at the throat. Both weighted ends whirled out and stemmed around the neck, gaining speed until the weights thwacked its skull with the sound of a melon being crushed by a wagon wheel.

  “Now, Doyle!”

  Doyle fired point-blank into the face of the hood. The thing toppled over, skidded down the slates, and fell from sight.

  “Damn,” Jack said.

  “Thought it went rather well.”

  “I was going to use that scarf to get us off the roof.”

  “Handy little item.”

  “South American, actually, although they’ve been using a variation in the Punjab for centuries.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, how will we get down, Jack?”

  Doyle thought he heard a carriage approaching below.

  “We’ll have to jump, won’t we?”

  Jack was looking intently down at the street and a now-visible approaching carriage.

  “Really? We won’t get far on a pair of broken legs—”

  Before Doyle could further organize his objections, Jack grabbed him by the belt and jumped off the building. They hit the roof of the moving carriage and ripped right through the fabric, landing in a heap on the cushions of the cab.

  “Good Christ!”

  “Are you in one piece?”

  Doyle quickly took inventory; save some discomfort in the ribs and a slightly turned ankle finding himself surprisingly intact.

  “I think I’m all right.”

  “Well done.”

  As they rushed past the coach outside the inn, Doyle dimly made out dark figures scrambling after them in the downpour. Jack rapped on what was left of the roof and the driver, the same small scar-faced man who’d driven them before, appeared in the gap above.

  “Evasive tactics, Barry,” Jack said. Barry nodded and turned back to his work. Doyle heard the crack of the whip, and the cab quickly accelerated.

  Jack settled back into the seat across from Doyle, holding up
a hand to the water cascading down onto them through the roof.

  “Sorry about the rain.”

  “Quite all right. We’ll have another chat then, as we go?”

  “Not just yet. We’ll be getting out in a moment.”

  “Getting out?”

  The carriage clattered across a short bridge and came to a sudden halt. Jack leapt from the cab and held open the door.

  “Come on, Doyle, we haven’t got all night,” he said.

  Doyle followed him back into the deluge. Jack waved to Barry, and the cab sped off again into the darkness.

  “This way,” Jack said, leading them down a steep embankment under the bridge they’d just traversed. “In here.”

  Jack pulled Doyle in under the relative dryness of the span of the bridge. Gripping his bag with one hand, Doyle used the other to haul himself onto a support strut, a precarious perch a scant few feet above the rising torrent of the stream below.

  “Are you secure?” Jack had to yell to make himself heard.

  “I believe so,” Doyle replied, but the remark was obliterated by the deafening thunder of a carriage and four hurtling across the bridge a foot above their heads. The sound moved away, quickly swallowed up by the storm.

  “Was that them?” Doyle finally asked.

  “Barry’ll have them running circles around Trafalgar Square before they realize we’re not on board.”

  Doyle nodded, reluctantly admiring the man’s resourcefulness. Some time went by. Doyle stared at Jack, who smiled amiably.

  “What do you suggest we do?”

  “I suggest that we sit here until the rain lets up,” Jack said.

  More time passed. Jack seemed quite content to wait it out in silence. The same could not be said for Doyle.

  “Look here, Jack, or whatever your name is, before we go any farther, I’d very much like to know exactly who you are,” said Doyle, realizing his patience was at an end.

  “You’ll have to forgive the subterfuge, Doyle, but there’s a certain logic to all this, which you’ll soon come to appreciate,” he said, and smiled again, reaching into his jacket and retrieving his silver flask.