The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(113)
But before he could step forward Murray restrained him, clasping his arm.
“Wait a moment, Arthur . . . I realize that this invisible monster isn’t another of your little hoaxes.” He reflected for a moment about what he was going to say. “No, of course it isn’t. Running poor Baskerville through with a sword would have been going too far, even for you. But”—he looked straight at Doyle—“what about what happened with the mirror?”
“That wasn’t our doing either,” said Doyle. “We insisted on holding the séance at Brook Manor in order to practice the slate trick without anyone seeing; that would have been impossible at your house, and you spent much of your time at the Wellses’, and as for my place . . . well, I could never have forgiven myself if my wife or children had found out that I was helping to organize a fraudulent séance. But what happened with the mirror . . . how could we have managed a stunt like that?” he gasped, betraying his own unease at the memory of it. “What we saw in the mirror was truly incredible, a mystery we need to look into dispassionately. But first we must get out of here alive, don’t you agree?”
Murray nodded but made no attempt to move.
“And what exactly did we see, Arthur? Where was Emma?”
“I can’t tell you that, my friend,” Doyle confessed, shaking his head in perplexity.
“Was that the Hereafter you so often talk about?”
Doyle lowered the mace to the floor and sighed wearily.
“I don’t believe it was, Gilliam. I think what we saw in the mirror was . . . another world.”
“Another world?”
“Yes, another world. And the mirror must be an entry point, a sort of portal . . .” Doyle paused to reflect. “I was reminded of the hole the Reed People made in the air, weren’t you?”
“Why, yes, of course.” Murray nodded with a knowing air.
“If I’m not mistaken, that magic hole was also a portal, only it led to the fourth dimension, a vast pink plain filled with other portals to other moments in our past and future. But what if it wasn’t true? What if that plain wasn’t the fourth dimension but rather a sort of antechamber to other worlds? And what if mirrors are shortcuts, portals that lead directly into other realities, without passing through the great antechamber?”
“Other realities?”
“Yes, things that might have happened but for some reason didn’t, or vice versa.” Doyle was speaking hesitantly, as though thinking aloud. “I don’t know whether you noticed that in the reflection I was wearing a different suit.” Murray shook his head slowly. “Well, I was. The one I put on this morning, and that I changed for this one after spilling coffee on it. Do you realize what that means? It is as if we had seen a parallel world where things happened differently. I didn’t spill coffee down my front, and Emma . . .”
“And Emma didn’t die!” Murray finished Doyle’s sentence, more perplexed than elated.
“No, in that parallel world she wasn’t the one who died in the accident,” Doyle corrected Murray, staring hard at him. He watched Murray’s bewilderment give way to alarm as he gradually understood what that implied. But Doyle didn’t give him a chance to carry on thinking, for he needed Murray to be as alert as possible. He lifted the mace and peered into the shifting darkness at the end of the corridor. “But let’s put that to one side now, Gilliam. We have to catch an accursed ghost.”
“And what does the invisible creature have to do with all this?” murmured Murray, not moving a muscle.
“I don’t know.”
“Does it come from one of those other realities?”
Doyle exploded. “I don’t know that either, damn it!” For a few seconds, he peered anxiously into the corridor they were about to venture down, where an unimaginable horror was lurking, and then he turned to Murray. “But I can promise you one thing, Gilliam . . .” He took a deep breath, suddenly aware that this was the moment he had so longed for in his childhood dreams, the moment when he would behave like an authentic medieval knight. His hair was disheveled, he was wielding a ridiculous, rusty mace, and he wore a pitted sword hanging from his belt that could mutilate him permanently at the slightest wrong move; but despite all this, he was smiling the way only the heroes of old could. “I, Arthur Conan Doyle, father of Sherlock Holmes, swear to you, Gilliam Murray, Master of Time, that if we come out of this alive, I will spend the rest of my days trying to unravel that mystery, and if there is a portal somewhere that leads to your damsel, I assure you I will find it.”
Murray nodded, touched and at the same time daunted by Doyle’s heroic attitude.
“Then what are we waiting for, Arthur?” he exclaimed, filled with an almost childlike excitement. “Let’s go after the Invisible Man!”
But before they could make a move, they were startled by a rumbling noise from below. They both stared at the floor, which had begun to shake with growing intensity, and before the two men knew it, the floorboards had split asunder and everything collapsed with a deafening roar. Groping in the dark, Murray managed miraculously to grab hold of the banister on the balcony with one hand while with the other he hung on to the crossbow. He felt a terrible cramp in his left arm, and a wave of blistering heat scorched his face. He cried out as he felt the pain wrap round his body like barbed wire. When it abated slightly, he realized that he had torn away part of the banister as he fell and was dangling in midair, his body pressed against the jagged edge of an enormous hole, like the mouth of a volcano, spewing plumes of thick black smoke and searing heat. He was relieved to discover that between the crater and the banister a flimsy, narrow strip of floor had survived. He set down the crossbow as far from the edge as possible and made a supreme effort to haul himself up, scaling the piece of banister that had come away under his own weight. Each time he leaned his elbows or knees on the strip of floor, bits of it broke away, plunging into the flames below like a dreadful omen. Murray was terrified of falling, but with one last almighty heave he managed to reach the ledge, where he lay sprawled on his back, gasping for breath, his arms and legs covered in gashes. He discovered that the sword was gone, but he still had the second arrow. He would have preferred it to be the other way round, but clearly his opinion didn’t count for much in this situation. At least for the moment he was out of danger, though he could not afford to rest. He retrieved the crossbow, and, standing up as straight as he could on that ledge, which was little more than a foot and a half wide, he tried to glimpse something through the smoke. The gallery floor was now a gaping hole, although, fortunately, the strip of floor under him stretched as far as the stairs, assuming it would hold up under his weight so that he could reach them.