"Not especially."
Doyle lowered his hands and gently touched his pockets. "I believe you've left your gun in the room. With Miss Temple," said Alexander. He smiled in a way that might usually be described as kind.
Doyle flexed his hands. The adrenaline kicking into his bloodstream rapidly elevated his heart rate. He felt under a microscope and tried to suppress his alarm to undetectable levels. Wary the man might possess untold mesmeric abilities, he blinked often and avoided his gaze for any extended time. "I must confess that meeting you in this way is quite strange, Dr. Doyle. I do feel as if I know you already," said Alexander, with no small modicum of charm. "Do you share that impression?"
"We have met before."
"However unknowingly." Alexander nodded slightly, the first movement he had made.
Doyle glanced casually around the yard. His only avenue of escape lay through the open door behind him, but that would expose his back for the time it would take to climb the
stairs.
"What do you want?" asked Doyle.
"I felt it time for us to effect a more formal introduction. I fear, Doctor, that my young brother, John, may have imparted to you some severe and perfidious misperceptions regarding myself."
I don't want to hear this, thought Doyle instinctively, I mustn't listen. He did not respond with either word or gesture.
"I thought there would be decided value in our making an effort to know one another as, perhaps, a belated corrective to the more delusional of John's spurious inventions."
"Do I have a choice?"
"One always has a choice, Doctor," he said, smiling incandescently. The effect reminded Doyle of acid dripping slowly onto dark, polished wood.
Doyle paused as long as he felt able. "I should like to get my coat. I'm very cold."
"Of course."
Doyle waited. Alexander made no move.
"Now?" asked Doyle.
"We shan't get far if you freeze to death."
"It's in my room."
"How perfectly reasonable."
"So I'll go get it then."
"I will wait for you," said Alexander.
Doyle nodded and edged back into the building. Alexander watched without moving. Doyle turned, then walked through the public rooms and back up the stairs.
What is he about? wondered Doyle. How supremely confident, or heedlessly arrogant, the man was. Relentlessly pursuing me for days on end, then allowing me to walk away when I'm dead-bang within striking distance. He knew perfectly well that whatever sensibility the man evinced was nothing but a skillful and treacherous simulation. But what was his purpose?
Doyle silently slid in the key and opened the door. The curtains and windows were locked as before. Nothing appeared to have been touched. But Eileen was gone.
So that was it then; he kept me there long enough for them to take her. Doyle went for his coat. The pistol was not in the pocket where he'd left it, nor in any of the others. His bag was still on the floor. He opened it, rifling through the medical supplies for a handful of medicinal vials and two syringes. He inserted the needles into the tubes, filled both syringes with the liquid, ripped a small tear in the fabric of his coat alongside the inner breast pocket, and deposited the extra vials inside. The syringes he slipped one apiece into the sides of his boots.
Wary he had aroused suspicion by taking too long, Doyle hurried down the stairs. Alexander waited near the open front door, as composed and motionless as before.
"Where is she?" asked Doyle.
Alexander nodded to the outside.
"If you've harmed her—"
"Please. No threats." He sounded amused; a smile nearly congealed on his wet mouth. "She's quite safe." "Let me see her." "By all means."
Alexander raised a long, thin hand, gesturing out the door. A large black coach and four stood in the drive, if not the same menacing carriage Doyle had seen before, then an extremely reasonable facsimile. The horses snorted gutturally, stamping their feet. Doyle walked to the carriage. The driver. bundled on his perch, never turned to him. Curtains obscured the windows. "She's inside."
Doyle started. Alexander stood directly behind him: he had not seen or heard the man move from inside the inn. Doyle opened the door and stepped into the coach. Feeble light spilled in from lanterns mounted on the chassis. Eileen lay on the rear-facing seat against the wall, unconscious, wearing her borrowed hat and clothes. Doyle checked her pulse and breathing; both were steady but faint. He detected the scent of a disabling chemical around her mouth and nose: ether, perhaps, or some more potent compound.
The coach door closed. Doyle turned to find Alexander sitting across from them. With a loud thunk, the handles moved down, locking mechanically. The carriage lurched forward. Doyle held Eileen in his arms. Alexander smiled compassionately.
"If you aren't offended by the compliment, Doctor, you do make a most attractive couple," he said pleasantly.
Loathsome as the thought was that this man had knowledge of their recent intimacy, Doyle held his tongue. He cradled Eileen closer to him and felt the tender warmth of her neck against his hand. "Where are we going?" Alexander did not answer. "Ravenscar?"
Alexander displayed that raw bone of a smile. His face appeared skeletal in the dusky light, all trace of personality pared away, stripped to its naked essence.
"There's something you must know about my brother, Doctor. Our parents perished tragically in a fire when Jonathan was little more than a boy. Such a precocious and happy child, as you can imagine, he suffered dreadfully. I had already reached the age of emancipation, but Jonathan was made a ward of the court and regrettably placed in the care of a family friend, a physician of radically progressive ideas but indiscriminate methodology. After months with no noticeable improvement, this doctor undertook to treat Jonathan's hysterical disposition with a series of narcotic injections. These treatments initially succeeded in suppressing his disease; it was not too long before his spirits appeared to rise to, if not exceed, the levels he had enjoyed before the difficulties.
"Most unfortunately, the doctor declined to suspend the treatments; he continued these injections for many months. Consequently, he delivered to young Jonathan a lifelong craving for this drug from which he has not to this day been able to acquit himself. This has led him, often in times of emotional complexity, to periodic bouts of overindulgence, and these in turn to episodes of acute dementia that have required his being confined to hospitals specializing in the treatment of the mentally disturbed."
"Such as Bedlam," said Doyle.
"Sadly, yes," said Alexander, with a world-weary shake of the head. "I have attempted as best I could to care for my brother throughout his terrible ordeal. But as so often happens when one raises the hand of loving consolation to someone in this pitiably reduced state, so commanding is the drug's attraction that one tangled in its web comes to perceive the giver of aid as an enemy sworn to sever them from that substance which they believe provides them with their only succor. As a doctor, you would be well acquainted with this phenomenon."
Doyle had with his own eyes all too recently seen Sparks feeding that hunger, and he did know what pernicious effects these addictions wrought in the mind. Alexander recounted the story with such lubricious sincerity that Doyle was momentarily at a loss how much to credit. Nothing the man raised necessarily put paid to what Jack had said about him, and Doyle had not yet confronted him with any of Jack's accusations. It was nearly impossible not to consider, if only for a moment, Alexander's offered alternative as a disturbingly plausible scenario. On the other hand, if he owned only a fraction of the power Jack had attributed to him, this sort of routine dissembling would be as effortless to him as multiplication tables for a mathematical prodigy. If he's lying, thought Doyle, what is his purpose?