disappeared. Moments later, he heard a healthy splash, followed in short order by an exclamation, a giggle, and then a contented sigh.
Resuming his survey, Doyle saw that the sprawl of Ravenscar proper filled the southern reaches of what was visible from the window. Outside the walls in that direction stood a high, rambling structure, serviced by a rail spur running to the west. Figures moved in and out of its cavernous doors. Boxcars waited in the switching yard. Black smoke
poured from two towering stacks that rose from the building's core. Beneath the chimneys, an ornate and sentimentally rendered scene of a mother standing in a kitchen, handing a biscuit to a little boy, covered a large expanse of wall. Lettering above it inscribed: mother's own.
'Arthur?' He could hear the slip and burble of languidly moving water.
'Yes, Eileen.'
'Could you come in here a moment, please?'
'Yes, Eileen.'
Doyle removed his coat, took the vials of medicine concealed in the lining and the syringes from his boots, and stuffed them beneath the cushions of a davenport. Then he moved to the bath.
Arms folded across her breasts, eyes closed, Eileen lay back against the angled wall of the tub, which simulated the form of a brass dragon down to its four taloned claws. Her skin looked like alabaster. There was a fine glisten of moisture on her lip. Her hair was loosely piled on top of her head, but a few delicious strands dangled delicately down to the waterline. Doyle was instantly thrown into a reverie: the enduring fascination of a woman's hair. How did they know just exactly what to do with it in every conceivable situation? How did they move it around their heads in such graceful, effortless defiance of gravity?
'I'm in a kind of heaven,' she said dreamily.
'Are you?'
'I assume I was given a drug of some kind.'
'Yes, dear.'
'It's difficult for me to think very clearly.' She was taking great care to enunciate clearly. 'My physical responses to things seem to be a bit ... overwhelming.'
'Which we can attribute to the drug as well I think.'
'So this feeling is going to go away soon.'
'Yes.'
'Hmm. Pity. I'm sorry, I'm not being very much help to you.'
'You're safe. That's all that matters.'
She rested an inviting hand on the edge of the tub. He took it, watching the water run off their entwined fingers.
'Mr. Jack Sparks did not come back?' she asked.
'No.'
'That's very troubling.'
'Yes.'
'We're in quite a serious muggins, you and I.'
'Yes, dear, I'm afraid we are.'
'Then after I've had a few more minutes to soak,' she said softly, 'I would like you to take me to bed. Would that be all right with you, Arthur?'
'Yes, dear. Yes, it would.'
She smiled and held his hand. He sat on the edge of the tub and waited.
Familiarity breeds a few feelings other than contempt, thought Doyle as he lay on the enveloping feather bed and by measured steps gave in to the round, full weight of his fatigue. Passion, for one. Whether as a result of the drug in her system or need inspired by the precariousness of their position, the urgency and abandon with which she had submitted herself to him fell significantly further outside his limited experience than their lovemaking of the night before. She lay curled in his arms now, smooth and soft, sound asleep, her jet hair an exotic stain fanning the milky linen. To his surprise, he had no difficulty reconciling these more tender feelings with the urgent, animalistic coupling they had shared only minutes before. No single act in his life had ever seemed more genuine. As he fell asleep, he remembered thinking he had never been as grateful to his mother for anything more than her failure to warn him against actresses.
Doyle woke with a start, his dreams fleeing like burglars. The light in the room was low, a shade of burnt orange, filtering at a sharp, perpendicular angle through the window. Someone's been in here while we slept, his instincts informed him. He sat up. His clothes gone from the floor where he had hastily discarded them, nowhere to be seen. Laid out on the opposite bed were a set of gentleman's evening wear and a woman's black velvet dress. Eileen lay asleep beside him. A sharp pang in his gut told him he was gnawingly, ravenously hungry.
Doyle found his watch lying neatly on the pocket of the dinner jacket and snapped it open: four o'clock. The day was almost gone! He pulled on the trousers, a perfect fit, and
slipped the braces over his shoulders as he padded to the window. The sun was fast approaching the western horizon. Ac-tivity in the courtyard continued, armed patrols on the walls still in force. Work had apparently ceased at the adjacent fac-tory, the stacks quiescent. But a thin line of smoke issued from one of the smaller buildings farther out on the moors. Feeling under the cushions of the sofa, Doyle determined the vials and syringes were in place where he'd stashed them, then he moved into the bath to attend to the body's necessities. A pitcher of hot water, a shaving mug, and razor sat beside a ceramic basin before the mirror, along with a shaker of astringent bay rum.
Freshly abluted, five minutes later Doyle reentered the bedroom. Eileen slumped on the edge of the bed, a sheet draped around her, the heel of a hand pressed to her forehead.
'Did you kick me in the head or just beat me with a truncheon?'
'You'll feel better once you're up and moving. They've left clothes for us, formal wear: Apparently, we're dressing for dinner.'
'Food.' The idea struck her as revelatory and seemed to ameliorate her discomfort. She looked up at him, to share the incredible thought. 'Food.'
'Not without its appeal,' said Doyle, kissing her before moving to the other bed.
'I don't think I've eaten in months.' 'Take your time. I'm going to have a look about,' said Doyle, as he quickly donned the rest of the clothes.
'I have vague memories of food,' said Eileen, as she traipsed to the bath, trailing the sheet, 'but I can't seem to recall ever having tasted any before.'
Doyle knotted the bow tie, checked it in the mirror, plumped the handkerchief in his breast pocket, and moved to the door. The handle was unlocked.
Sedate chamber music wafted from somewhere in the house below. Two men rose from chairs in the hallway as Doyle exited the bedroom. Both appeared in their early fifties and were similarly attired in evening wear. Each held a drink; the shorter of the two, a dapper, fastidious man with thinning hair and a trim black beard, smoked a blunt cigar. The taller one bore the broad shoulders and upright carriage of a mili-
tary man, his white hair trimmed to a rough bristle, a full, white walrus mustache cutting across the length of his square, uncompromising face. He hung back a step as the shorter man moved immediately to Doyle with an extended hand.
'We were just discussing something—perhaps you can settle the question for us, Doctor,' said the shorter man gregariously, in a flat, nearly American accent, beaming a gap-toothed smile. 'My friend Drummond here insists that if the proper circulatory equipment were to be made available, a man's head could indefinitely be kept alive and functioning after separation from the body.'
'Depends entirely upon which latitude the separation were to be effected,' said Drummond, his upper-class voice as stiff with reserve as his spine. His eyes, drawn slightly too far apart for symmetry in the broad box of his face, stared perpetually down his nose.
'Whereas I continue to maintain that the body provides far too many essential elements that the brain requires in order to carry on,' said the shorter man, as casually as if they were discussing the delivery of mail. 'And leaving the issue of maintenance aside, it's my decided opinion that the trauma of cleaving head from torso to begin with proves far too injurious for any portion of the brain to survive.'
