The Serpent's Shadow

that have not appeared, or even been hinted at, in the papers.'

'I know too much of it for my comfort,' Amelia confessed in a small voice. 'There was a girl I knew who somehow fell in with that set—' She shivered, and said nothing more.

And where was Amelia that she knows someone who managed to get entangled with Crowley's set? Maya thought with astonishment. There had even been rumors in India about the man—and certainly his so-called 'novels' were enough to sicken and warn anyone with any sense away from him. She had learned more from one of her patients; what she had heard had given her a nightmare or two.

'Two nights ago I had enough, when I heard from him that he had found yet another haven of evil to investigate. I told him that I would not go. That was when he set his mastiffs on me.' Jenner drew himself up and covered himself with the ragged remains of his dignity. 'I will not pretend that I fought well. The dogs are hellishly strong and fierce. I will not pretend that I was not afraid, for I screamed for my very life. But that was my temporary salvation, for my cries attracted the servants, who pried the dogs off me and brought me here. I think he expected me to die, for I was left alone and tended properly until today. That was when Simon appeared here, claimed that I had attacked him, and let it be known that although he would— magnanimously!—not press charges against me, he would not be displeased if I died of my injuries.'

'That tallies!' Bill exclaimed. 'When th' orderlies brung 'im 'ere an' dumped 'im i' that bed, tha's what they said. 'No wastin' med'cins an' good care on a nutter, they said. An' that th' Big Man 'ad some machine or other 'e was gonna try out on 'im, seein' as 'e was crazy an' 'twouldn't matter.'

'Interesting.' Maya pondered the man and the story. If it's a trap, it's one that's tangled beyond my unraveling. And if it's not, I cannot in good conscience leave this man here to be mauled and experimented upon. 'Amelia, I believe we should take a hand in this situation, don't you?'

'There's a bed at the Fleet gone empty,' Amelia said eagerly. 'Shall I have him discharged into your care?'

'Yes—no!' Maya corrected. 'No, we don't want his employer to know where he went. No, this is what we'll do. I'll get some working-man's clothing for him and have O'Reilly come by and certify him as ready to leave. You wait here, and when O'Reilly signs him out of the ward, take him to a taxi and bring him to the Fleet. While you're taking him to the taxi, I'll get hold of his records and make them disappear.' She chuckled. 'Doctor O'Reilly and the head nurse won't go looking for him, because they signed him out, but when Mr. Parkening comes looking for him, he'll have vanished, and there will be no trace of him ever being here—except, perhaps, the clothing he was wearing when he was brought here.'

'An' I won't know nothin',' Bill Joad said, with a grin. 'Not that the loiks of they are gonna ask the loiks of me.'

'Why are you doing this for me?' Paul Jenner asked, bewildered, looking from Maya's determined face to Amelia's eager one, to Bill's crafty smile and back to Maya.

I wish I could answer that! Maya thought—but at the same time, she knew, somehow, that this was the right, indeed the only, thing she could have done. 'Because it is right,' she said firmly. 'Now, Amelia, let's get about this, before Mr. Parkening takes it into his head to return.'

The clothing wasn't that difficult to obtain; she didn't even need to leave the hospital to get it. More poor men left this place dead than alive, and often in no need of the clothing they'd worn when they entered the hospital; if there were no relatives to claim the body, it was used for dissection and buried in potter's field. Generally, the clothing left behind was laundered, mended, and thriftily stored in case it was needed; after all, it cost the hospital nothing to store it. Most often, it went to clothe some poor fellow whose own garments had been cut off him during emergency treatment; dungarees and heavy canvas shirts were much alike, and it is doubtful that the few who received such largesse were aware they were wearing a dead man's clothing. Maya simply went to the storeroom, made certain there was no one about, then purloined a set of dungarees, a cap, and a rough shirt out of the piles waiting folded on a shelf.

She brought the clothing to Amelia and Paul, then she went in search of O'Reilly. It wasn't hard to find him; his head and beard of fiery red curls were visible across the dimmest ward.

'You're up to some deviltry, woman,' the Irish doctor said, when she'd asked him to discharge Tenner with as scant an explanation as she thought she could get away with. 'I know it; I see it in your eye.'

'Let's say I'm attempting to prevent deviltry, shall we?' she replied, staring him straight in the face. 'And the less you know, the less you have to lie about later.'

O'Reilly stroked his abundant mustache and beard thoughtfully. 'I've never heard anything but good about you from the nurses . . . and anything but bad about you from that worthless lot of puppies that trails about after Clayton-Smythe, hoping to snatch up his scraps. ...' His thoughtful expression lightened into one holding a touch of mischief. 'Aye, I'll do it, girl, if only to put one in the eye of that worthless newie of his. Oh, aye, I heard Parkening raving about the poor lad this morning—and a bigger pack of lies I can't imagine. The boy's no more mad than I am. There's something wrong there, but I'll wager a month's pay that it's not on Tenner's side.'

'You won't be sorry,' she breathed, hoping that she wouldn't be proved wrong about that. He laughed and patted her head as if she were a child, then turned to go—but just as quickly, turned back before she could hurry away.