Despite his recent suspicions, Doyle was nearly overcome by a Hippocratic impulse to compassionately rush to his aid, but common sense froze him in his tracks. A secret enslavement to narcotics hardly decreased the chance that Sparks was out of his mind; it made the possibility that much more likely. There was no denying Sparks's shame in the behavior; the man kept it from his closest confederates. As great a hazard as he might pose to anyone else, it was clear Jack Sparks provided just as real a danger to himself.
Sparks rose to his feet again and moved from sight. More sounds. Clasps being thrown. A pizzicato plucking of strings. Sparks stepped back into view, holding a violin to his neck. He tested the bow across the bridge, turning the pegs, checking for tune. Then he leaned against the back of a chair and began to play. A black dissonant thrumming issued from the instrument, but there was a cold and brutal sense to it, not melody precisely, it bore no evidence of song, this order of notes could never have been set to paper; it seemed rather the direct expression of a terrible wound, sharp, torn and ragged, flushed with pain. Doyle knew this was the sound of Sparks's secret heart, and the burden it placed on the listener's mind was nearly as harsh as the one it sprang from and so eloquently described. Before long it reached an unresolvable impasse. There was no crescendo, no climax; it simply had to stop. Sparks lowered his head, slumped down onto the arm of the chair, and his arms hung limply at his sides. Doyle's breath sfiuddered in his chest; a sob wanted to escape.
Sparks slowly raised the violin again and began to play a second piece. This one possessed both coherent rhythm and harmony: a low, sweet threnody, laced with grief, a trickle from a dammed-up sea of unshed tears. It sent into the air a vibration of almost unbearable emotional resonance. Doyle could not see Sparks's face in the shadows, only the graceful belly of the instrument and the shape of the man's arm drawing the bow. He was grateful for the relative discretion of the sight. He knew that, however they had met their end and at
whosoever's hand, he was listening to Sparks mourn for his dead.
The piece ended. Sparks did not move for many minutes; then, with considerable effort, he roused himself from the somnolent embrace of the narcotic, returned the instrument to its case, and walked slowly toward the back. His step was faltering and uncertain; thrown off balance by the movement of the car, he was more than once forced to support himself against the walls. He stopped in front of the berths. Doyle drew back from the curtain, but through the gap he could see Sparks's thighs swaying. Sparks lifted a foot onto Doyle's berth and hoisted himself, hesitating halfway up, trying to re-center his balance; Doyle could see the buckles shining dully on his boots. With a guttural grunt, Sparks pulled himself the remainder of the way and landed heavily on the thin ticking of the upper bunk. His body shifted once and did not move again. He was lying on his back. Doyle listened to the rhythm of Sparks's breathing as it flattened, growing shallow and strained.
Doyle lifted the pistol, his heart beating wildly. I could fire now, he thought. Put the gun to the mattress, empty the chambers, and kill him. He placed the barrel gently against the bed above and cocked the hammer. He worried about the sound, but there was no audible change in the respiration above; Sparks was, in every sense of the phrase, lost to the world. Doyle lost track of how long he lay there, pistol in hand, on the thin edge of that fateful decision. Something in him prevented his pulling the trigger. He couldn't name the reason. He knew it had to do with the music he'd heard, but he fell into sleep while trying to discover why.
The gun was still in Doyle's hand when he woke, but the hammer had been eased to rest. Dirty gray light seeped through the curtains on the outer window. He reached over to part them and looked outside.
The train was still clipping along at a considerable pace. They had driven into the leading edge of a storm during the night. The sky was deeply overcast. A fresh mantle of snow frosted the flat, featureless land; more of the stuff gently fell in puffy clusters the size of dandelions.
Doyle rubbed the film from his eyes. He was hungry, sore, drained by the emotional exertions of the long night before. He looked at his watch: seven-thirty. He could smell shag tobacco and strong, brewing black tea, but it took the unexpected sound of laughter to rouse him from his bunk to the front of the car.
'Gin!' he heard Larry say.
'Blast you for a sod!' said Sparks.
More laughter. Larry and Sparks were playing cards at the table, a tea service laid out beside them. Sparks was smoking a long-stemmed pipe.
'How-do-you-do and look at this fine news,' said Larry, picking over the cards as Sparks laid down his hand. 'These stray members of the royal family you've clutched to your bosom will cost you a queen's ransom.'
'Don't torment me, you devil—ah, Doyle!' said Sparks cheerfully. 'We were just debating about whether to wake you; got a fresh pot here, care for a cuppa souchong?'
'Please,' said Doyle, requiring no further invitation to join them and help himself immediately to the offered plate of biscuits and hard-boiled eggs.
Sparks poured the tea as Larry totaled up his cards and added the resulting figure to a long, snaking column on a well-traveled pad of paper.
'That's the game then, guv. More's the pity,' said Larry. 'My stars and stripes, you're in a pretty fix now, I can tell you, break out the violins.'
'What's our running total then?'
'Roundin' off the figure—and I can gladly do you that small favor, can't I?—you look to owe me ... five thousand, six thousand forty quid.'
Doyle nearly choked on his tea. 'Lord ...'
'We've been at the same game for five years,' explained Sparks. 'The man's simply unbeatable.'
'Tide's bound to turn your way eventual, guv,' said Larry, reshuffling the cards with alarming adroitness. 'Every dog has his day.'
'That's what he'd like me to believe.'
'Wot else is it but 'ope of eventual good fortune wot keeps bringing you back to the table? Man's gotta have 'ope to live.'
'I'm convinced he cheats, Doyle,' said Sparks. 'I just haven't discovered his methods.'
'I keep tellin' him there's no substitute for the favor of old Dame Luck,' said Larry, with a theatrical wink at Doyle.
'They haven't found an adequate one for money yet, either,' said Sparks good-naturedly, rising from the table.
'A man's got a right to lay somethin' aside for his idle retirin' years, don't he? He wants a bit of leisure and layin' about when the stems and pies give out, as we all knows they must in the end.' Larry offered the deck for Doyle to cut and smiled cheesily. 'Care for a game, guv?'
'Doyle, I'll not say a word regarding the decision you're about to make other than this: It's a good deal easier to resist the first step on the road to ruin than any of the thousand that inevitably follow.'
'I'll decline, thanks all the same, Larry,' said Doyle.
'Cheers, Doc,' said Larry happily, fanning out a handful of aces before pocketing the cards. 'It's plain to see you learned something in that fancy college besides where to find a man's ticker.'
'I'm a firm believer that if one must entertain a vice, better not to take on more than one at a time,' said Doyle, with a casual look at Sparks.
'And what might your one solitary vice be, Doyle?' asked Sparks jauntily, leaning against the galley, arms folded, puffing on his pipe.
'Belief in a man's innate goodness.'
'Ho-ho!' said Larry. 'That's not a vice so much as a guaranteed noose round yer neck.'
'Naivete, then,' said Sparks.
'So might a more cynical mind call it,' said Doyle evenly.
'And you might call it ...'
'Faith.'
Sparks and Doyle looked at each other. Doyle saw a tightening around the corners of Sparks's eyes. Had he shamed some vulnerable place in him, or was it simply a reflex of remorse? Whatever the case, Sparks retreated from the openness of their exchange, the jocularity of the mood he'd built with Larry forfeiting its bright sheen.
'Long may it serve you well,' said Sparks.
' 'In God We Trust,' ' said Larry. 'That's what they stamp on the money in America. There's the proper place for faith, you ask me.'
Sparks started for the door to the engine, 'I've squandered enough of my dwindling fortune in your direction for one sitting, Larry; time to earn your keep and shovel some coal—'
