The Isle of Blood (The Monstrumologist #3)(71)

“And what of this ridiculous and bizarre charade in the room? What is your excuse for that? You knew it was those men we saw in the station, and yet you pretended that you deduced everything, down to the color of the killer’s hair! For what reason, Pellinore? In mocking Doyle, you mocked the dead!”

The doctor’s countenance darkened. He leaned forward and poked von Helrung in the chest.

“Do not speak to me of mockery, von Helrung. Do you have any inkling of what it’s like to be sane and have your very sanity be the thing that binds you? Think about that before you judge me for a harmless bit of whimsy!”

They fell silent after this heated exchange, until we reached our destination, at which point the doctor knocked sharply on the hansom’s roof and directed the driver to now take us to Piccadilly Circus. The whip cracked, and we were off again.

“Where are we going?” von Helrung demanded.

“To Piccadilly Circus.”

Von Helrung closed his eyes and sighed wearily. “You know what I meant.”

The doctor glanced behind us, and then settled back into his seat. “I do.”

“They are ruthless, you said. Killers without compunction or remorse, you said. But you fail to say who they are or why they pursue us.”

“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 Plešec. 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 naïve 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.”

Chapter Twenty-Five: “Dvipa Sukhadhara”

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.”