everything familiar turns the trick quite neatly, too, I can attest to that, thought Doyle. The scales have surely been ripped from my eyes.
Was such a loss so catastrophic? Doyle turned the question over more thoroughly than a roasting game bird. He might be hungry now, but he knew full well starvation was not to be his fate; there would be another meal somewhere soon along the way, and hunger would only make it taste the sweeter. He had lost his home and possessions, but there was another home to be made, other possessions to replace what had been taken. He had his wits, his strength, his relative youth, good boots, the clothes on his back, and the courage of his convictions. He had adversity, and an imposing adversary, against which to measure his own worth, and in Jack Sparks a comrade- in-arms to stand beside and face this sea of troubles with together. What more did he require?
If one could only remain as aware as I am in this moment, thought Doyle; had he fortuitously stumbled onto the secret of peace of mind? Here it was then: The circumstances of a life must not dictate our terms of living it; that decision resides only in one's reaction to circumstance. And those reactions must be susceptible to our control. The mind, it all began in the mind! How blindingly simple! It bolstered him with a feeling of freedom as expansive as he could ever recall. His step quickened as his spirits soared. The open road ahead was an invitation to discovery, not disaster. He would embrace his hardships, forge ahead and brave the dangers in his path with equanimity and fortitude. Damn the Dark Brotherhood! Let this degenerate Alexander Sparks do his worst! He would consign them all to the same damnation they sought to visit on the earth!
A speeding wagon hit a deep puddle, and a heavy shower soaked Doyle through to the skin. Mud glopped from his forehead in clots. Water ran down his back and into his boots. A sudden gust of wind froze his bones to the marrow. It started to rain, sheets of the stuff, stinging like frozen bees. He sneezed. His newfound resolve fled before him like a flock of starlings.
'I'm in hell!' he shouted miserably.
A cab pulled up beside him. Larry sat in the driver's seat. Sparks threw open the passenger door.
'Come along, Doyle, you'll catch your death out here,' he said.
Salvation!
Larry poured a kettle of steaming hot water into the basin where Doyle was soaking his feet. He sat wrapped in a blanket, shivering wildly, a hot plaster planted on his forehead. Larry replaced the kettle on top of the coal fire, on the screen of which Doyle's clothes lay drying in their dingy Holborn hotel room whose meager trappings rendered the memory of the Hotel Melwyn on par with the Savoy.
'Not a first-rate idea, Doyle, seeking out Inspector Leboux. For the second time,' said Sparks, stretched out on the room's only sofa, idly forming a cat's cradle from a length of yarn.
'I was in prison. In possession of what I believed to be in-
formation vital to our cause. We had a noon appointment. I saw it as my foremost obligation to obtain the quickest possible release,' said Doyle testily, fighting off the ague, in a completely foul humor.
'We would have gotten you out soon enough.'
'Gotten me out how?—achoo!'
'Bless you. They know we're back in London now,' said Sparks, weaving around the yarn, ignoring Doyle's question. 'A considerable disadvantage. We'll be forced to move much more rapidly than I'd hoped we'd have to.'
'And just how do they know we're back in London? I trust Leboux implicitly, and I daresay I know him a good sight better than I know you.'
'Doyle, you hurt my feelings, you really do,' said Sparks, holding out the cat's cradle to solicit the use of Doyle's hands.
Doyle reluctantly thrust his hands out, and Sparks loomed it expertly around his fingers. 'How could they possibly know, Jack?'
'You spent two hours in a cell chockablock full with an honor roll of London lowlife and made a grand show of buying your way out. Alexander would have every dirty ear in town listening for the approach of our step. Do you imagine some word of your performance hasn't filtered back up the vine?'
Doyle sniffed and snorted, dearly wishing he had the use of his hands back to stem the flow of effluent from his nose.
'What about Barry?' asked Doyle, conceding the point.
'Don't you worry none 'bout Barry, guv,' said Larry, sitting in the corner, happily dipping Scottish shortbread biscuits in his tea. 'Many's the worse scrape he's shimmied out of before. The toffs ain't dreamed up the ark-e- tecture of a cell that can hold the likes of Brother B for long.'
'Doesn't talk much, your brother,' said Doyle, for the moment wishing Larry shared the trait.
'Barry's of a mind it's better to be silent and presumed a fool than to open your mouth and removed doubt altogether,' said Larry cheerfully.
Sparks whistled 'Rule Britannia' as he plaited another variation on the yarn between their fingers.
'At least we found Bodger Nuggins,' said Doyle defensively. 'And we got a fair amount out of him, too. At least give me credit for that.'
'Hmm. Not a moment too soon, I'd say.'
'You can't very well hold me responsible for his death.'
'No, I reckon we have another party to thank for that. Pity. Just before Bodger might have revealed to us what purpose was behind the shipping of those convicts to Yorkshire—'
Doyle sneezed mightily, nearly kicking the yarn off his fingers.
'Bless you,' said Larry and Sparks jointly.
'Thank you. Jack, when I last laid eyes on Nuggins, he was all but very firmly in the hands of the police. An hour later he's found facedown in the river. Are you suggesting the police had something to do with this?'
'Why do you suppose I persist in warning you against speaking to them?' said Sparks patiently.
'Which implies, fantastically, that in addition to his alleged criminal empire, your brother holds some sway over Scotland Yard.'
'Policemen are no more immune to the influence of his magnetism than the moon is to the earth.'
'So what would you have me believe? Lansdown Dilks, the police, escaped convicts, General Drummond, Lady Nicholson and her brother, her husband's land, your brother, the gray hoods, the Dark Brotherhood: It all points toward a great indefinable hooking-up somewhere, does it?'
'I daresay that's never been very much in question,' said Sparks, deep in contemplation of his increasingly complicated string work.
'And the pig's blood from Cheshire Street—may I ask what that suggests to you?'
'Something very odd indeed. Show Dr. Doyle the picture, Larry.'
'As you say, sir.'
Larry produced a photograph from the pocket of his coat that he held up for Doyle to peruse. It depicted a woman leaving the rear of a building down a flight of stairs toward a black coach in the lower left-hand corner of the frame. A tall, strong-featured woman with raven hair, near thirty, Doyle estimated, not attractive in a conventional way, but handsome, commanding. Although her face was slightly blurred by movement, her attitude was unmistakably surreptitious and covert.
'Do you recognize this woman, Doyle?'
Doyle studied the photo closely. 'She looks somewhat like Lady Nicholson, a good deal like her, actually, but this woman is ... stronger somehow, physically larger as well. This is not the same woman.'
'Very discerning,' said Sparks.
'Where did you obtain this?'
'Why, we took it ourselves, this morning.'
'How is that possible?'
'All you need's one good eye and one flexible digit,' said Larry, holding up the box Doyle had seen Sparks pocket at the hotel that morning.
'A camera. How ingenious,' said Doyle, anxious to examine it although his fingers were thoroughly enmeshed with yarn.
'Yes,' said Sparks, making a last maneuver with the string. 'Extremely useful. Seeing as how we happened to be concealed outside the rear of the Russell Street publishing house owned by Lady Nicholson's family at the time.'
