Surgeon. The same life he'd planned for me. I was a boy, he'd take me round to hospital with him. First time he led me into the wards I ...'
'It's all right,' said Doyle.
Spivey's eyes misted with tears. 'How could I explain to him my horror? I discovered I could see the patients' illness on them. I could see ... these people ... covered with ... blossoms of waste . .. flowering on them ... weeds consuming a landscape, I could see it ... inching its way across them, their disease ... eating them alive. I fainted. Couldn't tell him why. I begged him never to take me back to that place. What if a like illness should trespass onto me? That was the rub. What if I was forced to watch that excrescence slowly make a meal of my own flesh, before my own eyes? I'd go mad. I'd sooner end my own life.'
'I understand, Spivey.'
Shades of Andrew Jackson Davis, the Appalachian mystic, thought Doyle. Spivey had the gift, all right, and it proved too much for him, poor bastard. Never again will I regard this particular hypochondriac's complaints too lightly. He made elaborate apologies for his intrusion and started toward the door.
'Please—could I trouble you to take this with you, Doc-tor?' Spivey asked, eyes closed, gesturing weakly toward the shredded picture on the floor. 'If you don't mind. I don't wish to have it in my house.'
'Certainly, Spivey. No trouble at all.'
Doyle gathered up and pocketed the tatters. He left the depleted Spivey Quince reclining in his chaise, left hand resting on his heart, the right, palm out, touching lightly to his forehead.
'A bald boy in bright colors hangin' round the Royal Mews. Hope you didn't lay out too many readies fer that priceless pearl. And me luvely drawin' torn to bits in the bargain.'
'I've known Quince for three years, Larry,' said Doyle. 'Something tells me this may be worth looking into.'
'Mother's Own Biscuits indeed. You know what his problem is: He's hungry. He needs to get out more. He's got biscuits on the brain pan. What time've you got, guv?'
'A quarter to ten.'
'Right. Mr. Sparks wanted us to run by his flat at ten sharp.'
This was the first Doyle had heard mention of a London residence. 'Where is his flat?'
'As it happens, sir? Montague Street, adjacent to Russell.'
Larry whipped the horse and drove the hansom due east on Oxford to an address on Montague, directly across from the British Museum: number 26, a whitewashed, well-kept, but otherwise nondescript Georgian town house. The carriage was stabled in the rear, they entered, and Doyle followed Larry up a narrow flight of stairs.
'Come in, Larry, and bring Dr. Doyle with you,' Sparks shouted through the door before they'd even knocked.
They entered. Sparks was nowhere to be seen, the room's only human presence a ruddy-cheeked, middle- aged, roly-poly Presbyterian clergyman. He was seated on a high stool, conducting an experiment at a long chemistry bench covered with a mystifying array of apparatus.
'Charcoal dust on your fingers; you've something interesting to tell me,' said Sparks's voice out of the minister's mouth.
If one wasn't aware of his genius for disguise, thought
Doyle, the only possible explanation would be demonic possession. He replayed for Sparks his visit to Spivey Quince.
'Eminently worth investigating,' said Sparks.
Doyle squelched a prideful impulse to shame Larry with a look and glanced around the room. Shades were drawn— Doyle doubted they were ever opened, so close and musky was the air—and every inch of available wall lined with bulging bookshelves. A stack of index cabinets filled one corner. Above them a bull's-eye target of thatched straw with the let-ters VR spelled out in bullet holes. Victoria Regina. A strange way for Sparks to demonstrate devotion, but a sort of tribute nonetheless. The largest map of London Doyle had ever seen, studded with legions of red- and blue-headed pins, consumed the wall behind the chemistry bench.
'What do the pins signify?' asked Doyle.
'Evil,' said Sparks. 'Patterns. Criminals are generally thickheaded and inclined to ritualize their lives. The higher the intelligence, the less predictable the behavior.'
'The devil's chessboard,' said Larry. 'That's what we calls it.'
A tall glass-front highboy standing in the opposite corner caught Doyle's eye. It displayed a diverse collection of an-tique or exotic weaponry, from primitive Stone Age daggers to flintlock muskets to a cluster of octagonal silver stars.
'See anything in there that you'd prefer to your revolver?' asked Sparks.
'I prefer the predictable,' said Doyle. 'What are these lit-tle silver gewgaws?'
Shinzaku. Japanese throwing stars. Absolutely deadly. Kill within seconds.'
Doyle opened the cabinet and picked out one of the gad-gets: expertly crafted from high-tensile steel, edges serrated lik.e fishhooks that were thin and viciously sharp. It sat as lightly in the hand as an oyster cracker.
I must say, Jack, wicked as it feels to the touch, it doesn't look all that dangerous,' said Doyle. Of course you have to dip them in poison first.' 'Ahh.'
'Care to try a few? Terribly easy to conceal. You just have be careful not to prick yourself with them.'
'Thanks just the same,' said Doyle, gingerly replacing the star.
'I've collected these lovelies around the world. If man could apply half the ingenuity he's exhibited in the creation of weapons to more sensible ends, there's no limit to what he might yet accomplish.'
'May be 'ope for the rotter yet,' said Larry, sitting on a corner of the bench, rolling a cigarette.
'What's in the filing cabinets?' asked Doyle.
'It's plain to see my secrets aren't safe for a moment with you in the room,' said Sparks, with a wink at Lam1.
'That's the Brain,' said Larry.
'The Brain?'
'Inside that cabinet is a painstakingly detailed compendium of every known criminal in London,' said Sparks.
'Their criminal records?'
'And a great deal more. Age, date, and place of birth, family history, schooling and service records; recognized methods of operation, known confederates, cell mates, bed mates, and habitats; physical description, aliases, arrests, convictions, and time served,' said Sparks, without interrupting his chemistry experiment. 'You will not find a more encyclopedic assemblage of information useful to the tracking and apprehension of felons in the Scotland Yard or, I daresay, any other police department the world over.'
'Surely the police must have something similar?'
'They haven't thought of it yet. Fighting crime is both an art and a science. They still treat it like a factory job. Go on, have a look.'
Doyle randomly pulled open one of twelve drawers; it was lined with rows of alphabetically arranged index cards. Picking a card from the drawer, Doyle was surprised to see it was covered with a handwritten scrawl of what appeared to be incomprehensible gibberish.
'But how can you read this?' asked Doyle.
'Information as sensitive as this by rights has to be rendered in code. Wouldn't want this particular body of knowledge falling into the wrong hands, would we?'
Doyle studied the card from every angle. The method of encrypting went far beyond the limits of any code he'd ever attempted to decipher.
'I take it the encoding is of your own invention,' said Doyle.
'A random amalgam of mathematical formula, Urdu, Sanskrit, and an obscure variation of the Finno-Ugric root language.'
'So this is all really quite useless to anyone but yourself.'
'That is the point. Doyle. It's not a lending library.'
