'Sorry.'
Leboux's cheeks filled with color. 'Do you happen to know his hat size?'
Doyle leaned forward and lowered his voice. 'You'll have to forgive my vagueness, Claude. He's an elusive figure, but there's a better than even chance this man is nothing less than criminal mastermind of the entire London underworld.'
Leboux shut his notebook and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. 'Arthur,' Leboux said, measuring his words like a printer. 'You're a doctor. Well on your way to becoming a pillar of our community. I say this to you as a friend: You are not on the straight and narrow to reaching that post by running, around England dressed like a butler going on about plots to murder you in the night by mysterious kingpins of crime.'
'You don't believe me. You don't believe I've been under attack at all.'
'I believe that you believe that you have been—'
'What about what I found on the floorboards at Thirteen Cheshire Street?'
'Yes. I had that substance analyzed by our chemist—'
'You can't tell me that wasn't blood, Claude.'
'That it is. It does appear that you did in fact witness a murder.'
'Just as I told you—'
'The murder of a large hog.'
There was silence. Leboux leaned forward. 'It was pig's blood, Arthur.'
'Pig's blood? That's not possible.'
'Perhaps someone got carried away caning the Sunday roast,' said Leboux. 'A bit on the rare side for pork, if you ask me.'
What did this mean? Doyle raised a hand to his throbbing head.
'You could do with a nice slab of rare meat about now for that knot on your bean,' said Leboux.
'Forgive me, Claude, I'm a trifle confused. It's been a very trying few days.'
'I don't doubt that.'
Leboux folded his arms and gave him a look that was more parts police inspector than trusted friend. Feeling the leverage of Leboux's scrutiny, Doyle was prompted out onto an even less sturdy part of the limb to which he was so precariously clinging.
'John Sparks,' he said, almost a whisper.
'Excuse me?'
'John Sparks.'
'Any relation to the other gentleman?'
'Brother.'
'What about John Sparks, Arthur?'
'Does the name ring a bell?'
Leboux paused. 'Perhaps.'
'He tells me he's in the service of the Queen,' whispered Doyle.
That brought Leboux to a momentary halt. 'What am I to do with this piece of information?'
'Perhaps you could verify it.'
'What else can you tell me about John Sparks, Arthur?'
Leboux asked quietly, as close as he had come to an open appeal for Doyle's cooperation.
Doyle hesitated. 'That's all I know.'
They looked at each other. Doyle could feel bis bond with Leboux stretch to its breaking point; for a long moment there was no telling whether it would hold. Finally, Leboux flipped open his notebook, wrote down Sparks's name, closed the book, and rose.
'My strong advice to you is stay in London,' said Leboux.
'Am I free to go then?'
'Yes. I need to know how to reach you.'
'Leave word at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. I'll make a point of checking there on a daily basis.'
'See that you do.' Leboux stopped to offer a more considered opinion. 'I don't think gambling is at the heart of your difficulty, Arthur; I don't think you're particularly well. If I were you, I would seek out the opinion of a doctor. Perhaps even the services of an alienist.'
Fine, thought Doyle, he doesn't think I'm a criminal, he just thinks I'm mad.
'Your concern is not unappreciated,' said Doyle humbly, trying not to offend.
Leboux opened the door and hesitated, without looking back. 'Do you need a place to stay?'
'I'll manage. Thank you for asking.'
Leboux nodded and started out.
'One more name, Claude,' said Doyle. 'A Mr. Bodger Nuggins.'
'Bodger Nuggins?'
'He's a prizefighter. He was at the dice game but apparently wasn't apprehended along with—'
'What about Bodger Nuggins?'
'I have it on good authority the man's an escaped convict from Newgate.'
'Not anymore he isn't,' said Leboux.
'Sorry? I don't follow.'
'We pulled Mr. Bodger Nuggins from the Thames about an hour ago.'
'Drowned?'
'His throat was slashed. Like he'd been attacked by an animal.'
IT WAS A LONG WALK FROM PeNTOiNVILLE PRISON TO THE CEN-
ter of London for a man with no coins in his pocket or food in his belly. He hadn't judged it prudent to press Leboux for Barry's release; he was still inside Pentonville and might be for some time. Prison held no surprises for Barry, and fewer now for Doyle. He had already missed his noon rendezvous with Sparks at Hatchard's Bookshop, and he dared not hire a hansom without the surety he could pay for its services at journey's end. Now that hope was gone. The road was muddy and slow going, passing wheels routinely baptizing him with spume. From their sheltered perches, the carriage trade stared down at him with suspicion, disdain, or, worse yet, looked through him as if he were a pane of glass. Doyle experienced a surge of kinship for the tramp's disenfranchisement from the propriety and narrow-mindedness of genteel city life. Riding high in their private coaches from one privileged location to the next, an endless roundelay of social engagements and leisurely luncheons and shopping and smug preoccupation with their beastly children, these upright citizens seemed a species of life as foreign to him as the electric eel. Doyle was stunned to discover he had more innate sympathy for Barry the East End burglar than for these bourgeoisie parading past him on the street. But weren't these prosperous gentlefolk the highest purpose of a civilized society, a permanent, expanding middle class able to enjoy the products of society's labors in safety and freedom? Weren't they the audience he himself aspired so strenuously to entertain, deepening their appreciation of the human condition by exposure to his craft? How close-minded they were! How effortlessly led to accept the values of school, church, or institution. The thought of exerting himself to touch the hearts of these unfeeling brutes in their hermetic carriages suddenly felt empty and profitless as their supercilious pursuit of a happy, carefree life.
Industrialized society demands a terrible tribute from its parishioners, thought Doyle. Did any of us realize how few of our ideas or feelings were truly, originally, our own? No, or how could we go on day after day, enacting the same lifeless rituals, repeating the same deadening actions, if we acknowledged their lack of meaning? So much of our ability to survive is predicated on the conscious limiting of our mind and senses. We're wearing blinders like the swaybacked dray pulling the beer wagon, peering out at the world through a spyglass, peripheral vision denied, excluded, and our choice in the matter removed because we've been taught from birth that such narrowing is compulsory. Because to remove the lens from our eye is to be confronted with the pain and anguish and sorrow we've shunted so diligently away from view. But the misery around us remains regardless, constant, immutable, a legless beggar by the side of the road. Suffering must be the inevitable tariff exacted from spirit for residing in human form. No wonder tragedy wields the only hammer stout enough to crack the resilient bubble of complacency we construct around our petty lives, shrouding our gaze from the furies that patrol the darker corridors of the night. War, famine, mass disaster. That's what it takes to wake us from this sleep. Terror and the sudden severing from
