The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx (38 page)

“Well, accidents happen,” McLeod replied. “At least you weren’t killed. Incidentally, your car’s been towed to a police impound yard north of the Firth. Apparently you did a hell of a job on it. I’ve given the information to Humphrey, and he’s checking on the insurance details, but it’s pretty clear that you’re going to be ordering up a new one.”

Adam managed a wan grin, “Can’t complain. It saved my life. Odd about the tire, though. I must’ve hit something.”

“I hope so,” McLeod said, suddenly very sober.

“What do you mean?” Adam cocked his head at McLeod. “Do you know something I don’t?”

McLeod shook his head. “No, no, it’s just that you yourself commented on the timing. And you
could
easily have been killed. Certain parties would have found that very convenient.”

A shiver raised the fine hairs on Adam’s forearms.

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” he murmured. “I’m already paranoid enough that I wouldn’t let them do a routine blood work-up on me. I found myself remembering how someone got to Gillian. They could have killed her just as easily. I’m vulnerable here.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t stay here overnight, then,” McLeod said. “Or I could put a guard on the door . . .”

“Now we’re
both
being paranoid,” Adam said with a shake of his head. “The plain truth of the matter is that I’ve just suffered a serious car crash and ought to be under medical observation for twenty-four hours. I’m probably fine, but it really is easier on everybody if I stay overnight. It’s pointless to burden Philippa. Besides, trauma assessment is a little outside her recent experience—probably about fifty years outside it. I’ll be fine. As you obviously noticed when you came into the room, I’ve already put a fair amount of energy into warding it.”

“I can’t argue
that.
You think they’ll let you out in the morning, then?”

“They should, unless Dr. Lockhart and I are both totally wrong. Incidentally, I’d appreciate it if you could arrange for Humphrey to collect me around eleven. As you can see, this room hasn’t got a phone.”

“Will do,” McLeod agreed. “And since you’ve caved in to independent medical opinion and actually agreed to stay, I have to assume that you really are hurting, and that you’re too knackered to bother with that Balmoral material this afternoon.”

Adam closed his eyes briefly. “You assume correctly,” he said. “Could you plan to bring it up to the house tomorrow afternoon, after I’ve got my wits about me better? It’s about time we all touched bases—together anyway. Peregrine ought to see it too.”

“I’ll set it up. Anything else I can do for you?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“I’ll let you get some rest, then.” McLeod rose and tossed him a mock salute. “So
long, then, boss. Get a good night’s sleep, if you can find a comfortable position, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Adam had missed lunch by the time he was installed in his room, but after McLeod left, he succeeded in wheedling a snack of tea and sandwiches out of one of the nurses. He napped then, even though someone came to rouse him every hour to take his vital signs, until Dr. Lockhart came to check on him just before dinner. Even broken sleep seemed to have eased his aching head, other than a tenderness about his bandaged wounds, but nearly every other part of his body ached even worse. At his request, Dr. Lockhart increased the prescribed medication, then bade him a friendly good-night, with permission to sleep, and continued on about her rounds. After a light supper and two more of the yellow capsules, Adam let himself escape into proper sleep. He had been asleep for perhaps an hour when he had the dream.

At first he thought the man was Ian MacPherson, the Mason blasted by lightning the week before, but then he realized it was another Master Mason. In fact, there were lots of Master Masons, formally bedecked in blue-bordered aprons and sashes and collars, standing on the black and white checkerboard floor of a Masonic temple, working a ritual. Though Adam was not a Mason and had never witnessed a Masonic ritual firsthand, he knew it for what it was, because most workings of this sort tapped into a common pool of esoteric tradition, forms differing but alike in their focus toward the Light.

The dream unfolded. The man he had taken for MacPherson, who seemed to be the Master of this Lodge, was reading from a great book, several of his officers around him, perhaps thirty other men listening attentively to his words. Adam could not hear what the man said, but, he sensed that it was sacred teaching which followed, if Freemasonry truly tapped into the universal Mystery Schools.

Suddenly the Master faltered, he and then his officers and brethren starting to look uncertainly around the Lodge room, wide, frightened eyes apprehensively searching empty air, which suddenly was charged with static energy. In the split second before it happened, Adam knew what was coming and tried to warn them, but it was too late. With an ear-splitting crack, the ceiling exploded in fire and a shower of falling plaster and tangled roof beams and shattered slates, utterly blasting the roof away so that the room lay open to the sky! Clouds roiled and churned above the breached roof as lightning continued to pound at the building, ceasing abruptly then as a terrible silence descended, gradually broken by the moans and cries of the injured.

He was gasping as he came up out of it, heart pounding, and he had no doubt that he had tapped into something real and terrible—whether about to happen or already done, he had no idea. If it had already happened, there was little he could do; but if the dream had been a premonition, as his dreams sometimes were, it might be possible to convey a warning and avert some of the disaster.

He racked his brain for some clue as to
which
Masonic Hall it might have been—as if his limited knowledge of such things would enlighten him. But maybe McLeod would know. McLeod was a Master Mason. Maybe McLeod could help him track it down.

That hope lent him the strength to haul himself out of his bed and stagger over to the wardrobe, every muscle protesting. God, he couldn’t believe how stiff he’d gotten just from a few hours’ sleep! A part of him longed for a hot shower to ease the aches, but he knew that would have to wait.

Pulling a robe from the wardrobe, he thrust his left arm through its sleeve and drew the rest of the robe over his right shoulder and sling, then hobbled out to the nurses’ station to look for a phone. The head nurse looked shocked.

“Dr. Sinclair! What are you doing out of bed? Go back this instant!”

“I have to make a phone call,” ‘Adam said. “It’s important. Can I use this phone?”

He was already leaning over the counter to lift up one of the instruments from behind, setting it on the ledge and shifting the receiver to his right hand as he poised his left to dial.

“Is it nine for an outside line?” he asked.

“Yes, but—”

“Thank you.”

He dialed 9, then McLeod’s home number, but it rang busy for the next five minutes. It took him three tries to get through, as his keeper became more and more impatient and other staff congregated and wondered what to do about the eccentric Dr. Sinclair. It was McLeod’s wife who finally answered.

“Jane, this is Adam,” he said. “Is Noel there?”

“No, he isn’t, Adam,” she said. “He got a call-out just a little while ago, and he rang up your Mr. Lovat and left. You’ve just missed him.”

“Damn!” Adam said softly. “Did he say where he was going?”

“I’m afraid not,” Jane replied. “But it must have been north of here, because he asked Mr. Lovat to meet him—and Mr. Lovat lives up on your estate, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” Adam whispered.

“Dear me. He said something about an explosion at a Masonic Lodge. Adam, do you think this is connected with that awful business last week? Is Noel in danger?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” Adam murmured. “Jane, are you sure he didn’t mention anything more specific?”

“I’m sorry, Adam, but you don’t realize how little he talks about his work.”

“No, I can appreciate that,” Adam said quietly. He sighed. “When he comes home, Jane—or if he should ring you—tell him it’s important that he get back to me as soon as possible. Have him call the twenty-four-hour number here at the hospital, whatever the hour. Have you got that?”

“Of course, Adam. Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. Just tell him. I’ve got to go now. Sorry to disturb you.”

He was shaking as he hung up the receiver, and the head nurse was staring at him. She drew herself up officiously as their eyes met.

“Dr. Sinclair, I really must insist that you go back to bed, or I’m going to have to call Dr. Lockhart. This is most irregular.”

“Sorry to have disturbed your routine, Matron,” he said quietly. “It really was important. And if an Inspector McLeod should ring back later tonight, no matter what the hour, I want you to call me to the phone. I can’t tell you how urgent this is. Would you make a note of that, please?”

Reluctantly she agreed. Adam watched her write it down, then suffered her to follow him back to his room, where she lingered to take his vital signs and make notations on his chart before returning to her station. When she had gone, he lay awake for several hours staring at the ceiling, casting back in memory for the dream, gradually coming to wonder whether his accident and the dream were in any way connected.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

IN DUNFERMLINE,
within that hour, Peregrine Lovat pulled up at a scene of chaos and confusion. Parts of Dunfermline’s Masonic Hall still were burning, half a dozen fire engines knocking down the last of the flames while rescue workers sifted through the rubble for survivors. The school across the street had already become a temporary morgue for the dead, and yet another ambulance pulled away, blue lights flashing and siren wailing, as Peregrine slid the little Morris Minor into a space directly across from McLeod’s familiar black BMW.

Eager but also a little nervous, for he had never gone on one of these assignments without Adam, Peregrine collected his sketchbox and piled out of the car, shading his eyes against the glare of acetylene work lights and rescue spots as he crossed the street and approached a uniformed officer manning the barricades.

“I’ve been asked to meet Detective Chief Inspector McLeod here,” he said. “My name is Lovat.”

“Right through there, Mr. Lovat,” the officer said, pointing into the haze behind him. “Just mind the rescue workers.”

“I’ll do that. Thank you.”

Peregrine ducked under the yellow tape the officer lifted and headed toward a familiar grey head and topcoat at the center of a small group of uniforms. McLeod’s gruff voice filtered through to him above the surrounding din.

“I want statements in writing from anyone in the area who saw
anything
—anything,
you understand?” the inspector was saying testily. “I don’t care how outlandish it sounds. We’ll sort out the sense from the gibberish back at the precinct.”

The uniformed group broke up and dispersed. McLeod started to move away himself, then caught sight of Peregrine picking his way toward him across the litter-strewn ground.

“Finally!” the inspector muttered somewhat ungraciously, motioning him to hurry up. “What did you do, come by way of Aberdeen? Come on, I want the two of us to take a look around inside.”

Peregrine knew better than to take offense at the older man’s brusqueness. He had spent time enough now in the inspector’s company to know that with McLeod irascibility was a sign of a troubled mind—and he had every reason to be deeply troubled now. Even from outside, Peregrine could sense the harsh, discordant residue of intentional violence emanating from the building’s smoking interior.

It was a resonance he was learning to recognize and abhor, very like what he had sensed at Baltierny and Calton Hill. No need to ask McLeod for any confirmation concerning the agency responsible for the destruction he saw before him. The inspector’s strong face bore something of the bruised, angry expression of a boxer pulling himself up after being downed by a foul blow—and the look of someone determined to settle the account with compound interest.

McLeod was first up a flight of stone steps to the doorway that had been the Lodge’s front entrance. On the way in, they stood aside for a pair of rescue workers carrying a motionless black-bagged form between them, belted onto a stretcher. Both men were covered in dust and ashes, their faces filthy and haggard.

“God, MacKinnon, how many does that make?” McLeod said bitterly, his expression one of bleak disbelief.

The men shuffled to a halt, both of them clearly numbed by what they had seen.

“Eleven to hospital and seventeen for the morgue,” the one in front said, with a dour shake of his head. “Nobody walked away from this one. The only good news is that we think that’s everyone accounted for.”

He threw a pitying glance over his shoulder at the shrouded figure on the stretcher.

“This old gent must’ve been their Lodge Master. We found him under half a ton of rubble in the meeting room upstairs—he must have been standing right under a beam when the roof collapsed. Poor bastard probably never knew what hit him!”

He sighed and signaled his companion to move on. McLeod stood aside to let them pass, his grizzled head bowed low. Whether the inspector was thinking or praying, Peregrine couldn’t be sure. A few seconds later, the older man gave himself a shake and squared his broad shoulders with a snap.

“Right, Mr. Lovat,” he said heavily. “The medics, it seems, are all through. Now it’s our turn.”

He led the way through the remains of the vestibule into what had once been a spacious entry-hall. The parquetry floor was a tangle of fallen plaster and charred lathes and timbers. Off to their right, a handsome staircase led up to a mezzanine now open to the sky. The whole place was saturated with the stench of burning. The magnitude of the destruction made Peregrine feel sick at heart. He could only guess at the effect it was having on McLeod, who had shared a fraternal bond with the men who had died here.

“We’ll take it room by room,” McLeod said. “And watch where you put your feet. I don’t want you falling through a hole and landing in hospital like Adam. We’re short-handed enough, as it is.”

By “we,” Peregrine suddenly realized, he meant the Hunting Lodge. This tacit indication of McLeod’s acceptance was as heartening as it was unlooked for. Somewhat reassured, Peregrine shook off his sick dismay in a wave of fresh resolve.

“Are we looking for anything in particular,” he asked quietly, “or are we just looking?”

McLeod leveled bright blue eyes at him through his aviator spectacles.

“You just
look,
laddie. And if you
see
anything, I want to know about it.”

The doorway just beyond the stairs led into what had once been a formal reception room running the full length of that side of the building. Ducking under the door’s burn-scarred lintel with McLeod, Peregrine found himself surveying a devastation of smashed glass and broken picture frames.

“This looks like some sort of gallery,” he remarked softly.

“Aye.” McLeod had stopped to right a life-sized, three-quarter length portrait of a silver-haired man with a handlebar moustache who wore the regalia of a Masonic Master. “This Lodge has had a long and distinguished history. Its members set this room aside for displaying their mementoes . . .”

His voice trailed off. Coming over to stand at the inspector’s side, Peregrine took a long look at the portrait. Despite smoke stains and singe-marks, he could see it had been sensitively done. The Past Master’s face was strong and stern; the painted blue eyes that looked back at Peregrine seemed infinitely sad, as if the man himself were grieving for what had happened here. The sense of living presence was so strong that Peregrine couldn’t believe it was just his imagination.

We’re here to help,
he found himself assuring the man in the portrait.
I just wish you knew what happened and could tell us about it.

Beside him, McLeod gave a sudden, jerking shudder and groaned aloud. Startled, Peregrine looked to stare. The inspector was weaving on his feet, his blue eyes blank and unfocused behind his glasses. His mouth worked. For a few seconds, there was no sound. Then an unfamiliar voice whispered from his lips.

“An intruder broached the defenses,” it rasped. “The vile servant of a viler master. The temple was profaned . . . marked with the sign of an ancient enemy . . .”

The hoarse voice trailed off on a shuddering sigh. Peregrine gaped at McLeod, then realized what was happening. One of McLeod’s particular esoteric gifts was his ability to act as a medium—as Peregrine himself had witnessed once before at Melrose, where McLeod had allowed the spirit of Michael Scot to speak through his physical body. Now, evidently, he had given permission for a past member of this Lodge to do the same.

Another shudder shook McLeod’s powerful frame, causing him to stagger, and Peregrine caught him under one arm, uncertain what he should do.

“Cleanse the temple!” the voice urged on a rising note, “Find and remove the sign of desecration!”

The urgency of the plea seemed to demand a response. Heart pounding, Peregrine found his tongue.

“We will!” he promised. “Just tell me, please, where to look!”

But the speaker’s further discourse was reduced to an inaudible mutter. Without warning, McLeod’s head snapped back as if he had been given an upper cut to the jaw. Peregrine felt him stiffen; then he exhaled on a soft groan and buckled at the knees.

Peregrine tried to ease his collapse, scrambling to brace himself as McLeod sagged toward the floor. As both of them staggered to their knees, Peregrine’s vision blurred. All at once, in his mind’s eye, he saw the image of a heavy marble-topped table, like an altar. The sides of the table were decorated with panels carved in low relief.

Details of the central panel stood out in his mind—the image of a circle enclosing a star—symbol made from two interlocking triangles that he somehow knew to be the Seal of Solomon. The circle was flanked by columns on either side, each column surmounted by a globe that represented on one hand the map of the world and on the other the map of the heavens. Even as he tried to visualize the adjacent panels, McLeod gave a muzzy mutter and raised his head.

His blue eyes focused with a snap. As his free hand groped for support, he gulped air and let it out again with a
whuff.

“God, I
hate
it when they do that!” he wheezed in a voice that was once again his own.

His face was drained of color, exactly as it had been at Melrose; after the spirit of Michael Scot had released him. Searching the other’s eyes, Peregrine said, “Can you stand up? I’d suggest a sit-down, but the bloody floor’s literally covered with glass. You haven’t cut your hand, have you?”

Shaking his head, McLeod lifted his free hand from the floor and gingerly dusted glass and ash from it, using Peregrine’s support then to stagger shakily to his’ feet. Still gripping Peregrine’s arm for balance, he drew a succession of deep breaths that gradually grew easier, till his respiration came back to normal.

“Better?” Peregrine asked.

“Aye,” McLeod said. He straightened up slowly and tested his balance before letting go of Peregrine’s arm. “Aye, that’s more like it.” He let out another heavy sigh. “I shouldn’t do that without preparation. But the need was urgent.”

“Did those references to
the temple
make sense to you, then?” Peregrine asked.

“What did I say about the temple?” McLeod replied. “I don’t always remember what comes out in these exercises.”

His nonchalance was heartening. Dutifully Peregrine repeated what had been said, word for word, as nearly as he could recall it. Sighing again, McLeod nodded, assessing what Peregrine had told him.

“All right. I can’t tell you yet
exactly
what it means, but he’s given fairly clear instructions. In a sense, all work done in the Lodges is done in the Temple of the Inner Planes—but every Lodge also has its physical temple, usually on an upper floor of the building. That’s where we need to go.”

He flicked his gaze to the battered portrait still leaning against the wall. The inscription at the base of the sprung gilt frame identified the subject by name,
John Joseph Anderson,
along with the dates of his tenure as Master of the Lodge. Smiling grimly, McLeod gave the portrait a grave, understated salute.

“Thank you for your good counsel, Worshipful Master,” he said softly. “Mr. Lovat and I will take it from here.”

Despite damage to the carpeting and the banisters, the stairs themselves were still solid underfoot. The upper floor was strongly lit by acetylene lanterns as teams of firemen continued their task of securing the building, damping down exposed floorboards and clearing away still-smouldering debris. An icy wind was blowing down through the gaping black hole in the roof, with the occasional snowflake swirling in the lantern light.

“This way,” McLeod said, pointing ahead to what remained of a doorway on the other side of the mezzanine.

The large room beyond, like the mezzanine itself, was lit up by torchlight. They had to duck low to get past a tangle of fallen beams. The floor here was dangerously weak in places, a checkerboard maze of fractured black and white tiles laid over wooden under-fIooring, interspersed with ragged gaps where the fire had eaten its way through to the rooms below.

The worst of the damage was at the eastern end of the room, perhaps the very center of the devastation. Here, open to the sky, large heaps of rubble and shattered roof beams made a veritable maze. A few picks and spades lay near a remaining lantern, to show where the rescue workers had been digging in their efforts to recover the body of the Lodge’s Master. Two large slabs of scorched and sooty marble jutted at angles out of the mound of ashes and plaster like a pair of bookends knocked askew.

“That may be what we want,” said McLeod, pointing to the concentration of debris. “Let’s have a closer look.”

Taking the lantern with them, the two men worked their way cautiously toward their goal. Seen at close range, the canted slabs proved to be two parts of a marble-topped table which had been split down the middle. The charred remains of the supporting wooden side panels showed a variety of what Peregrine took to be Masonic symbols, carved in low relief, including a Seal of Solomon.