number.'
'Bishop Pillphrock?' asked Sparks.
Stoker nodded. 'The others he didn't recognize. The small boat made land, two men on board, one all in black. Their cargo was two crates, the size and shape of coffins, which were quickly unloaded. The man swore he saw a large black dog jump off the boat as well. The schooner did not wait for the return of the small boat; she had already pulled anchor, tacking against the wind for the open sea. The group onshore shouldered the crates, which did not appear to be heavy, and headed up the hill toward the abbey. They passed not ten feet from the old sailor's hiding place. He heard the Bishop say something about 'the arrival of our Lord'—he thought it was the Bishop who'd said this—and the man in black shouted at him in a harsh voice to be still. The sailor followed them and said he watched them carry the crates, not to Goresthorpe, but to the ruins of the ancient abbey farther up the bill. And he swears he watched that black dog run into the cemetery and disappear into thin air. Since then, he'd seen strange lights burning late at night in the ruins. What disturbed him most was that since that night his wife's voice had not spoken to
him again.'
'We must speak to this man,' said Sparks.
'They found him the next morning in the graveyard. His throat had been ripped apart, as if he'd been attacked by an animal. The caretaker said that during the night he'd heard the baying of a wolf.'
Sparks and Doyle looked at each other. Eileen wrapped her shawl tight around her shoulders and stared at the floor. She was shaking. The walls seemed suddenly both too small to contain what they were feeling and far too insubstantial to hold at bay the forces arrayed against them.
'What's that?' asked Sparks, pointing to a package on top of the dresser.
'That was my breakfast this morning,' said Stoker. 'A local product, apparently.'
Sparks picked up the package of Mother's Own Biscuits. 'We'll tell you the rest of our side of the story now,' said
Sparks. And so they did.
Sparks and Doyle spared no details from Stoker and Eileen, save Sparks his alleged government connection and Doyle his lingering reservations about Sparks himself—that note from Leboux still lay across his thoughts like an iron pike—and it was dark and evening before the telling was done. Snow continued to fall throughout the afternoon. Streets were already muffled with a fresh foot of it, and the storm showed no signs of abating. They sent down to the kitchen for a light supper of soup, cold mutton, and corn bread, which they shared in Stoker's room and from which they all took no small, restorative comfort. Eileen said little during the meal, never meeting Doyle's eye, withdrawing inside herself to some fortified place of sanctuary. Feeling a greater strength in numbers was called for, Sparks excused himself from their company to collect Barry and Larry from the inn near the station where they had registered earlier that long day. Eileen lay down on the bed to rest. Stoker took the occasion to draw Doyle out into the corridor for a private word, leaving the door slightly ajar so as to keep an eye on the room and more specifically the windows.
'As one gentleman to another,' began Stoker quietly, 'it is my fervent hope that the situation here does not appear to be an indelicate one.'
'How so?' asked Doyle.
'I am a most happily married man, Dr. Doyle. My wife and I have a young child. Miss Temple, as you cannot have failed to notice, spent last night in my room.'
'You were standing guard over her life—'
'Even so. Miss Temple is an actress and, you cannot have failed to notice, an extremely attractive woman. If any word of this were to find its way to London ...' Stoker shrugged in a way common to the private rooms of the most exclusive gentlemen's clubs.
'Given the circumstances, such a thing would be unthinkable,' said Doyle with unexpressed amazement. Was there no end to their society's fanatic preoccupation with propriety?
'I shall depend on your discretion then,' said Stoker, greatly relieved, offering his hand. 'I'm going to fetch a brandy, may I bring you one?'
'Thank you, no,' said Doyle. He wanted nothing to cloud his mind during the coming night.
'Miss Temple asked for one as a soporific before retiring last night. Perhaps I shall bring her one as well.'
With a slight bow, Stoker took his leave. Doyle reentered the room. Eileen was sitting up awake on the bed, deftly rolling a cigarette from a pouch of shag tobacco. Doyle's eyes widened.
'Do you have a match?' she asked. 'Yes, I believe I do. Just a moment. Here we go,' Doyle fumbled through his pockets, produced a match, and lit the cigarette for her. To steady the trembling—the result of nothing more complicated than being alone in the room with her—as he held the match near, she gripped his hand.
'Do you really think they'd attack us here with all these people about?' she asked, with a casualness and familiarity he'd not heard in her voice before.
'Oh, it is possible, yes, I would have to say, that it is, quite.' Why did English suddenly seem something a great deal less than his native tongue?
'You ought to sit down. You look terribly tired.' She crossed her legs and blew smoke into the air.
'Do I? Thank you, I am. I shall,' said Doyle formally, and he looked busily around for a place to sit. He finally picked up the straight-backed chair from across the room, set it facing the windows, picked up the shotgun, sat down, and tried to appear purposeful.
'You look like you know how to shoot,' she said after watching him for a moment, with the slightest trace of a smile. 'I sincerely hope I won't have occasion to demonstrate
while you are in such, uh, proximity.' He felt himself blushing. Blushing!
'And I have no doubt that if the occasion were to arise, I would be most suitably impressed.'
Doyle nodded and smiled like a mechanical bird. It was hard to look at her. Was she toying with me? he asked himself. Is it because I'm behaving like such a filbert?
'Do you treat many women, Dr. Doyle?' she asked, that Gioconda smile surfacing again.
'What's that?'
'In your practice. Do you have many female patients?'
'Oh my, yes. That is, I have my share. I'd say a good half, at any rate. Half of the whole, that is.' Half of eight, at its height, truth be told: all lost to him now. And not a one of them under the age of fifty with a swan's neck and skin like the petals of a rose and ...
'Are you not married?' she asked.
'No. Are you?'
She laughed a little. It reminded him of tinkling crystal goblets at an impossibly glamorous dinner. 'No, I'm not married.'
Doyle nodded intently, looked down at the shotgun in his hands, and with great concentration rubbed an imaginary smudge off the barrel.
'I've never given you proper thanks,' she said more soberly.
'None necessary,' he said with a casually dismissing wave.
'Still. I owe you my life. You and Mr. Sparks.'
'There's no reason for you to feel indebted in even the slightest way, Miss Temple. Given the chance, I would gladly do the same again and more,' he said, feeling emboldened. This time he held her eyes until she looked away.
She needed somewhere to stub out her cigarette. There was no ashtray on the bedstand. Casting around, Doyle came up with the wrapper from the biscuits and held it for her on the table as she tapped out the smoke. Their fingers brushed together lightly with an electric tingle that he didn't believe he was imagining.
'I want to help you,' she said in a low and husky voice. 'In any way I can. You must convey that to Mr. Sparks. Because, you see, I feel a certain responsibility.'
'You acted out of need. Urgent financial need. You couldn't know what would happen. You had no way of knowing.'
As she finished with the cigarette, she looked up, and their faces were only inches apart.
'Nevertheless,' she said. 'Will you convey that to him? Perhaps there is a way. I can be very
