The Isle of Blood (Monstrumologist)

“I would think the why is obvious. As to who… The big red-haired one is called Rurick. His bald partner goes by the name Plesec. They are Okhranka, Meister Abram, members of the Russian secret police.”

Von Helrung absorbed the news with a crestfallen expression. He had not wanted Torrance to be correct. A part of him, I think, clung to the hope that Jack Kearns had but one coconspirator in the affair, the betrayer Thomas Arkwright, and all the rest of it had sprouted in Jacob Torrance’s fertile imaination. The truth sickened his heart. He was a scientist, and the essence of science is the quest for truth, a noble thing in and of itself, but no human endeavor—no matter how noble—remains unsullied for long. Monstrumology could be characterized as a contemplation of nature corrupted. The same could be said of us.

“We were duped,” my master stated bluntly. “I suppose we could take some small comfort in the fact that we were not the only ones played for fools. Arkwright played us, but the Russians played him, and Jack Kearns, I think, has had his fun with all of us.”

“It was Jacob’s theory that Kearns and the British—and the Russians, too—were using us to find for them the home of the magnificum. They had the golden egg—the nidus —but not the goose who lays it. That’s how Torrance put it.”

Warthrop smiled tightly. “I’m going to miss Jake. He had a way with the colorful metaphor. He was partly right, but mainly wrong. We were being used, though not by Kearns or the Russians; they had what they wanted. Thomas Arkwright of the Long Island Arkwrights was a wholly British creation. Arkwright is an officer in the British secret intelligence service.”

Von Helrung sighed. “So the British are involved… and the Russians. Who else?”

“No one—well, not counting us, and I would not count us out just yet,” Warthrop said grimly. “I didn’t want to believe it. When I was first brought to Hanwell, it suited my naive faith to believe that Arkwright must have been working with the Russians—a double agent, a traitor to his country—and I bravely hung on to that bit of fiction for quite some time. In the first month of my lunatic holiday, I wrote more than forty letters, none of which, apparently, reached their intended recipient. Someone had to be intercepting them, and it is difficult for me to comprehend that the reach of Okhranka extended to the mails of England or the United States. Six of those desperate missives I personally handed to the superintendent. Now, I suppose he could be in the employ of the czar or be a member of Okhranka, but at some point we must put away childish things, Meister Abram, and acknowledge that, in matters where something like the magnificum is concerned, there are few limits to the perfidy of men and nations—even men like the superintendent and nations like Great Britain.”

“Alas, dear Pellinore, I have lived a very long time and have yet to discern any.”

We rolled to a stop, and the driver called out in a loud voice, “’Ere you are, guv’ner! Piccadilly Circus.”

“The Great Western at Paddington Station, driver. And with all alacrity, please!” called Warthrop. He smiled at the driver’s muttered curses as we started off again, to the place from which we’d begun.

“We are going in circles,” observed von Helrung.

“We were,” replied the doctor. “Though tonight no more! For on this night, my old master, the months in the wilderness come to an end. Ourong exile is over. I have the answer; I know from whence the wind cometh; I have found the hiding place of the grail.”

Von Helrung turned away from his friend with a pained expression. “You should not call it that.”

“Why?” the monstrumologist seemed genuinely puzzled.

“It should not be called that,” the old man insisted vehemently. A tear welled in the corner of his eye.

“Where is it?” I asked. “Where did the nidus come from?” The central question had gone too long unanswered.

Warthrop’s face was glowing with triumph. “The nidus ex magnificum was recovered upon the island of Socotra.”

Von Helrung looked round and stared at the doctor for a long moment. “Socotra!” he whispered. “The Isle of Blood.”

“The Isle of Blood?” I echoed. I could feel the tightly wound thing vibrating to the rhythm of my heart.

“It isn’t what you’re thinking, Will Henry,” said the monstrumologist. “It is called the Isle of Blood because that happens to be the color of the sap of the Dragon’s Blood tree, which grows there—the color of blood. Socotra has other names—better names, if names matter anything to you: the Isle of Enchantment, the Isle of the Phoenix, Tranquility Island, among others. In Sanskrit it is called Dvipa Sukhadhara, the ‘Isle of Bliss.’ Recently it has been dubbed the Galapagos of the East, for the island is so isolated that many of its species, like the Dragon’s Blood tree, are found there and nowhere else on earth.…”

“Socotra is a British protectorate,” von Helrung said.

“Yes,” acknowledged Warthrop. “And if it were not, the nidus never would have found its way to London’s East End and the clutches of Dr. John Kearns. The British have maintained a small presence there since ’76, when the treaty was signed with the island’s sultan, to protect their shipping routes from India and West Africa.”

“So the man who brought the nidus to Kearns was a British soldier or seaman?” asked von Helrung.

“No man brought the nidus to Kearns. A man was brought to Kearns, and that man brought Kearns to the nidus, in a manner of speaking. Once I identified the man, I had my answer. I mean, of course, our answer.”

“And Kearns’s answer—to pass on to his client, the czar of Russia! You will forgive this question, and I pray you will answer in the same spirit of goodwill in which I ask it, but, once you supplied the fiends with what they wanted, wouldn’t it have been much easier for them to simply kill you? Why riskall by arranging your sojourn in Hanwell Lunatic Asylum?”

“Didn’t Arkwright tell you? I am assuming that’s how you found me, through Arkwright, when you saw through