The List Of Seven (38 page)

"I'm sure I don't know—"

"The spilling of blood? Ritualized murders?"

"Perhaps," said Doyle, growing weary of the interrogation. "I'm not familiar with these things."

"But It would have to be born as a child first, wouldn't It?"

"Maybe they're shopping around for a nice couple in Cheswick to adopt the little nipper."

Sparks ignored the jibe. "A child with blond hair, seen in a vision? Taken from his father against his will, his mother an unwitting conspirator?"

"I'm sorry, Jack, but it's all a bit too much for me. I mean,

Blavatsky gets away with this sort of thing, but the reader naturally assumes, or at least I did, that it's all metaphoric or at the very least archaic mythology—"

"Isn't that what you wrote about in your book? The ill use of-a child?"

Doyle felt himself go pale; he'd almost forgotten his damned book.

"Is it, Doyle?"

"In part."

"And you wonder why they've come after you with such aggressiveness. What further confirmation do you require?"

The question hung in the air between them.

"Doyle ... let me ask you," said Sparks, softening his tone. "Knowing what you do about its history, what do you suppose this Dweller would be on about once it got its feet back on terra firma?"

"Nothing too out of the ordinary, I imagine," said Doyle, refusing to commit himself emotionally to the answer he knew was correct. "World dominion, total enslavement of the human race, that sort of thing."

"With a good deal more sophisticated weaponry available to the bugger this time around. Our capacity for mass butchery has increased a hundredfold."

"I would have to agree with you," said Doyle, recalling the presence on the list of Drummond and his burgeoning munitions empire.

Satisfied with the impact he'd made, Sparks sat back in his seat. "Then we'd best put a stop to this business straightaway, hadn't we?"

"Hmm. Quite."

But first I need to know you're not one of them, thought Doyle. I need to ask you why I should believe you're who you say you are, and I can't, I can't just now, either ask or believe, because if you are mad, you may not know or recognize the difference, and by asking I endanger my own life.

"What is an arhanta?" asked Doyle.

"You've never encountered the term?"

Doyle shook his head.

"Arhantas are Adepts in the Tibetan Mystery schools. Possessing spiritual powers of the highest order, an elite warrior

class. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about them is the degree of sacrifice they are required to make."

"What sort of sacrifice?"

"An arhanta spends the body of his life developing certain arcane—you might call them psychic—abilities. At the height of his strength, after years of hard, thankless study, the arhanta is asked to entirely forsake the use and exercise of those powers and to undertake a life of silent, anonymous contemplation, far removed from the centers of worldly life. It is said there are twelve arhantas alive in physical life at any given time, and it is their radiant presence and selfless service alone that prevents mankind from self-destruction."

"They're not supposed to use these alleged powers to fight evil?"

"The teachings say that has never happened. It would be a violation of their sacred trust, with far more grievous consequences."

Doyle chewed on that thought with no little difficulty. "Why would the boy call you one, then? On the face of it, you don't readily answer to the description."

"I have no idea," said Sparks. He seemed as genuinely conflicted and confused as Doyle.

They wrestled with these thorny contradictions awhile. Doyle was jostled out of his brown study by the carriage running over a rough patch as Larry led them off the road onto a cart path leading through a dense copse of woods. Emerging into a clearing on the far side, they were greeted by the heartwarming sight of the Sterling 4-2-2 they'd left in Batter-sea, waiting on north-running tracks. Smoke belched from its stack, the furnace stoked and ready to roll. Behind it trailed a full coal hopper and, even more encouragingly, a passenger car. Emerging from the cab with a welcome wave was none other than Brother Barry, late of Pentonville Prison. There was nothing of the sentimental reunion about this meeting, however; it was grim, fast business, and hardly a word was spoken. Effects were transferred to the train, horses set loose to run, and the carriage carefully concealed in the woods. Sparks and Doyle boarded the passenger car, and the brothers took to the engine. Within moments they were underway. The sun slid low on the horizon; they would make most of their northern run at night.

Although customized, the passenger car was Spartanly appointed: four double seats facing each other, removable tables between them. Two bunked sleeping berths in a rear compartment. Planked wooden floors, oil lamps set in otherwise bare walls. A simple galley with a loaded icebox, stocked with provisions for the journey.

Sparks assembled one of the tables and sat down to pore over a packet of maps. Doyle took a seat across the car from him and utilized the silence to arrange his medical inventory and clean and reload his revolver. He obeyed an instinct to keep his pistol close at hand.

After an hour had passed, Barry joined them and laid out a peasant's supper of bread, apples, cheese, salted cabbage, and red wine. Sparks ate alone at the table, making notations and working with his maps. Doyle sat with Barry in the galley.

"How did you get out?" asked Doyle.

"Coppers let me go. 'Alf an hour after you went off."

"Why would they do that?"

"Tried to follow me, didn't they? Hoped I'd lead 'em straight to you."

"And you eluded them."

"Only in a trice."

Doyle nodded and took a bite of apple, trying not to appear overanxious. "How did you know to meet us where you did?"

"Telegram. Waitin' for me at the train yard," said Barry, with a nod toward Sparks, indicating the telegram's sender.

That followed logically; Sparks must have sent the wire when he was out this morning, Doyle thought. He finished his wine and poured another cup. The hum and rattle of the tracks and the wine's warming properties applied an agreeably stabilizing remedy to his apprehensions.

"Barry, have you ever seen Alexander Sparks?" asked Doyle, keeping his voice low but not unduly confidential.

Barry cocked an eyebrow, glancing at him sideways. "Odd question."

"Why is it odd?"

"That's the maestro's middle name, idn't it?" said Barry, nodding toward Sparks. "Jonathan Alexander Sparks. That's my understanding."

Confident their voices wouldn't carry over the racket of the train, Doyle casually turned his back to Sparks, placing himself directly between him and Barry. Doyle felt a trickle of cold sweat slide down his back.

"You mean to say," said Doyle, "that you've never heard Jack mention a brother by the name of Alexander?"

"Don't mean much if he 'adn't. Doesn't gab about hisself. Don't gab much to me in any case." Barry bit into a plug of chewing tobacco. "Larry's the talker. He could jaw the shine off a mirror and sell you the frame. Beggin' your pardon. I just remembered Larry's expectin' his supper."

Barry tipped his cap, wrapped the remainders of the meal in a bundle for Larry, and went back to the engine. Doyle stood alone in the galley, staring across the car at Sparks. His worst fears ran riot through his mind, trampling the shards of security to which he had been struggling to cling. When Sparks glanced up at him, Doyle responded with a false, overquick smile and raised his glass in anemic bonhomie, feeling every bit as exposed and remorseful as a redhanded pickpocket. Sparks turned back to his work without any notable reaction.

Doyle was stricken; what was he to do now? Hadn't his treacherous thoughts been writ as plain on his face as a sandwich-board advert? Every step he took seemed to be precisely the wrong one, ferrying him deeper into still and murky waters. He made a small, efficient dumb show of yawning and picking up his bag.

"Think I'll turn in," said Doyle.

"Fine," answered Sparks.

"Long day. Long, long day."

Sparks did not respond. Doyle's feet felt rooted to the floor.

"Berths in the back then," he said with a smile, pointing congenially toward the rear of the car. Why was he making these ridiculous and obvious statements?

"Right," said Sparks, without looking up.

"Rhythm of the train. Comforting. Ought to help us sleep, that. Rocking motion. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack." Doyle could scarcely believe the words were leaving his mouth; he was chattering like some demented nanny.

Sparks took a lingering look at him. "Are you feeling all right, old boy?"

Doyle's antic smile lit up like a fun house. "Me? Tip-top. Never better!"

Sparks winced slightly. "Better leave off the wine then."

"Right. Off to dreamland!" Doyle couldn't stop grinning to save his life.

Sparks nodded and went back to his studies. Doyle finally convinced his legs to move and walked back to the berths. "Off to dreamland"? What had gotten into him?

Doyle stood before the banks debating which would be the safer to accommodate his doubts and fears for the night. This took some time. When Sparks glanced back at him again, Doyle smiled and waved, then climbed into the lower bunk and pulled the curtains shut, sequestering himself in the cubicle.

Staring at the bunk above, Doyle clutched his bag to his chest and held the revolver tightly in his hand. Scenarios of doom hovered in his mind like enraged hummingbirds. If he comes after me, thought Doyle, I won't go down without a fight. Maybe I should just fire a few preemptive bullets into the upper bunk while he's asleep, give the emergency-stop cord a rip, and slip away into the wilderness.

Doyle peered discreetly out the crack in the curtains; he could see Sparks's back, hunched over his work, reading, writing, looking through a magnifying glass. Even his posture suggested a hitherto unnoticed mania: cramped, nervy, and obsessive. How readily apparent the man's madness seemed to him; how could it have escaped his attention until now? Distractions, yes, there had been no shortage of them, not to mention that the man's unquestioned genius put up such an impenetrable screen it was nearly impossible to detect where invention ceased and true character began. But still Doyle chided himself; for all his observational acuity the signs of Sparks's instability had been there all along: the moody silences, the disguises, the veiled grandiosity—arhanta indeed!—his fixation with secrecy and global conspiracies, the folderol that passed for his criminal filing system—maybe those cards held nothing but random scribblings; lunatics typically create entire worlds animated by nothing but private, delusional significance. And there was no lingering question about the man's talent and capacity for violence. He would be spending the night in a space no larger than a good-sized steamer trunk with one of the most dangerous men alive.

Time passed in this fashion. Sleep was out of the question; rest itself was tenuous. Doyle hardly dared utter a sound or move a muscle; Better let Sparks think I'm asleep, passive and unsuspecting. His body was plagued by a painful oversensitivity: his mouth grew dry and cottony; his legs felt like stilts. Every blink of his eyes produced a clap as loud as castanets.

He heard stirring in the car. He longed to know what time it was, but reaching for his watch seemed far too complicated a procedure to initiate. Slowly shifting his weight, Doyle reached over and parted the curtains; Sparks was no longer at the table. He was out of sight altogether, but only half the car was visible from Doyle's limited vantage. There was a sound at the door to the engine, also out of view; the latch being thrown, the door was now locked. Sparks moved back into Doyle's range of vision, then out again. A repeated click of metal on metal. Closing the curtains on the car windows; those were the rings as they slid along the rods. Then Sparks moved from one wall fixture to the next, rolling down the wicks on the oil lamps; the room darkened. Door locked, curtains closed, lights down low. Either he's turning in, thought Doyle—but why would he lock the door against Barry and Larry? And on a moving train!—or he's setting the stage to make his fatal attack.

Doyle brought the revolver to the edge of the curtain and braced himself, but Sparks made no move to the rear; he was still walking around the cabin. Pacing restlessly. He clasped and unclasped his hands several times, ran his fingers through his hair, stopped and stood with a hand pressed hard to his forehead, then resumed pacing again. He's trying to decide whether to kill me or not, Doyle couldn't help thinking. Then, with one sweep of his arm, Sparks cleared the maps off the table, took a small leather case from the inner pocket of his jacket, set it down on the table, and opened it. Doyle saw a glint of light on metal; he strained to make out the case's contents, but Sparks still moved between him and the table, and the light in the room was too dim for details.

Sparks wheeled and looked suddenly back at the sleeping

berths; Doyle resisted the impulse to snatch shut the curtains the fraction they were open. I'm in total darkness, Doyle said to himself, he can't possibly see me. Doyle didn't move, his hand frozen in air, lightly touching the curtains. Sparks looked long and hard and then turned back, apparently satisfied he wasn't observed. Sparks's hands moved to the objects on the table, Doyle heard the clink of metal on glass. What did he have in that packet?

Sparks took off his coat and began a complicated sequence of actions completely screened from Doyle's view. When Sparks turned back, in profile now, vividly outlined by the lamp on the wall behind him, Doyle saw a syringe in his hand. Sparks tested the plunger; the needle emitted a fine spray into the air.

Good God, thought Doyle, he means to kill me by way of lethal injection. Doyle's finger tightened on the trigger, ready to gun down Sparks where he stood. But Sparks did not turn toward the berths. He set down the syringe, unbuttoned the left sleeve of bis shirt, and rolled it over his elbow. He fixed a length of slender twine around his bicep and pulled it taut with his teeth. Flexing and releasing his left arm, he tapped at a vein in the hollow of his forearm, swabbed the area with antiseptic, picked up the syringe from the table, and without hesitation squidged it into his arm. He paused, inhaled evenly once, twice, then pushed smoothly forward on the plunger, emptying its contents into his bloodstream. He extracted the empty needle, set it down, and released the rope from his arm. Sparks staggered slightly as the needle's message was swiftly delivered. He moaned once, softly, a lurid sound, full of hideous appetite gnawing on satisfaction. His body shook with illicit excitement as he surrendered to the seductive intruder.