The List of Seven

by Mark Frost

  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 military 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.”

  “I will go one step further, John,” said the General. “I submit that if the cut were made at a sufficiently low intersection, it would be possible for the head to retain the power of speech.”

  “You see, we disagree there as well: Where would the wind come from, Marcus?” argued Sir John Chandros, the owner of Ravenscar. “Even with the neck in all its unfettered glory, there’s no bellows to move the air through the vocal cords. Come on, man! What expertise can you offer us, Doctor? From a purely medical perspective?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never given the matter much thought,” said Doyle.

  “But it is a most provocative subject, don’t you agree?” asked Chandros, who apparently felt no further introductions necessary.

  “A heady matter indeed,” said Doyle.

  Chandros laughed genuinely. “Yes. Heady. Very good. Heady: Do you like that, Marcus?”

  Drummond snorted, Doyle assumed disapprovingly.

  “Marcus has been in violent need of a good, solid belly laugh for the last thirty years,” said Chandros. “And he needs it still.”

  Drummond snorted again, seeming to confirm the opinion.

  “For an accredited cynic and somewhat notorious man of the world, my friend the General manages to retain a remarkable naïveté.” Chandros took Doyle’s arm in his before he could respond and directed him down the corridor. “However, Doctor, apropos our prior discussion, regardless of its particular unlikelihood, I strongly believe that as a race of people we are on the verge of such a vast sea change of scientific discovery that it will transform forever life as we have known it.”

  Another snort from Drummond: There were apparently shadings and nuances to the man’s use of the exclamation that would require months to interpret.

  “Drummond will warn you that I am an inveterate disciple of the future. Guilty as charged. I happen to believe that if man is in need of hope, he need look no further for it than tomorrow. Yes, I’ve been to America, spent many years there: New York, Boston, Chicago, there’s a city for you, powerful, tough, raw as the wind. Done a lot of business with them—they understand business, the Americans, second nature to them—and perhaps they’ve infected me with their optimism, but I still say if a man with the right idea meets a man with the right money, together they can change the world. Change it, hell: transform it. God gave man dominion over the earth; it’s high time we took the bit between our teeth and pulled the plow with which the Lord provided us. Tried politics. Not for me. Too damn dependent on consensus to get anything done. Committees didn’t build the Great Pyramids; Pharaoh did. My point is: The business of living is a business. Let me give you an example.”

  As they passed a banister looking down on the entrance hall, Doyle saw the long table was set for dinner. Well-attired guests mingled before the fire. With the baleful shadow of General Drummond trailing them, Chandros took Doyle past the overlook and through a door, out onto a high balcony. A vast panorama to the west, where the sun balanced perfectly on the lip of the horizon.

  “What’s man’s greatest obstacle in life?” asked Chandros, puffing away on his cigar. “Himself. That’s the rub. His own damn animal nature. Perpetually at war with the higher power inside. Can’t surrender. There’s a genius living cheek by jowl in the same bag of bones with this lower man, and let me tell you, sir, that lower man is nothing but a troglodyte, a half-wit chucklehead without the common sense to live. Worse still, this dumb clot thinks he’s the long-lost son of a god; it’s only a matter of time before the world puts him back on the throne where he belongs. In the meantime, he works like a dull ox and he drinks and he gambles and he whores and he pisses his life away and he dies crying out for this god that deserted him to save his pathetic, penny-ante soul. Let me ask you this: What everloving deity in its right mind would waste a moment’s precious thought on a worthless wretch like that?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Doyle, recoiling at the man’s frigid assurance.

  “I will tell you: no deity worth a tinker’s dam.” He folded his arms, leaned against the wall, and looked out over the land. “Now the Christians have had a good run. No question about it. One dead Jew with some neat tricks up his sleeve, promoted like hair tonic by a few fanatical followers, and one converted emperor later they’ve got themselves a Holy Empire to shame any in history. Going on two thousand years. How did they manage it? The secret of their success was simplicity: Concentrate your power. Wrap it in mystery. Hide it inside the biggest building in town. Lay down a few commandments to keep the peasants in line, get a regulatory grip on birth, death, and marriage, throw in the fear of damnation, some smoke, a little music—there’s your first commandment: Put on a good show—and customers will come crawling on their knees for the stale crumbs of that Feast of Saints. Now that…that was a business.”

  Drummond snorted again. Doyle wasn’t certain if it was meant as affirmation or rebuttal.

  Chandros puffed and chomped his cigar. His dazzling blue eyes sparkled with inspirational zeal. “So: How do you change man from a dim-witted, randy farm animal to a domesticated, productive tool ready to roll up his sleeves and pitch in for the greater good? There’s the puzzle anybody that aspires to rule has to crack, be it religion, government, business, what have you. And here was the plain genius of the Christians’ solution: Convince your constituents of one big lie. We hold the key to the gates of heaven. You want to make the trip, brother, you’ll have to do it through our auspices. Sure, advertising how dodgy the Other Place is helped close the deal: Fear puts those poor ignorant sods down on their knees lighting candles like there’s no tomorrow. And let’s be straight, Old Nick’s always been their real matinee idol—the man you love to hate, he’ll scare you so bad you piss in your union suit, but you still can’t take your eyes off him. He’s the one puts the ladies in a lather, not that simpering, doe-eyed Messiah. Throw the Devil in to spice up the soup, and you’ve got yourself a flawless formula for religion hegemony. Worked like a Swiss watch. Nothing came close.

  “But the march of progress—and you know it moves independently of our measly concerns; there’s mystery for you—the march of progress demands that those in power change right along with the times. We’re at the big table now, boys, playi
ng with a whole new deck of cards: heavy industry, mass production, international economies, weaponry like you never dreamed of. Pious homilies and weak cheese pulpit-pleading to the customer’s spiritual virtue just don’t cut the mustard anymore. The Christians, as they are fond of saying in Kentucky, are just about shit out of luck. Excuse my French.”

  As the sun sank below the horizon, its dying rays lit Chandros and the sandstone wall behind him with a fiery orange luster.

  “Look down there, Doctor,” said Chandros, pointing toward an enclosure near the outer walls. “What do you see?”

  A number of men in identical gray-striped pants and jackets of rough, nubbed material were filing into the compound through a gate leading toward the biscuit factory. The hair on their heads was cropped close to the skull. Armed guards supervised their movement, barking instructions, as the men fell into formation, their voices responding with cadenced chants that faintly reached the balcony.

  “Workers. Factory workers,” said Doyle.

  Chandros shook his head, leaned in, and tapped Doyle on the chest for emphasis. “The answer,” he said. “The men you are looking at were until recently the lowest, most degraded form of human filth imaginable. Convicts: mean, vicious, blockheaded incorrigibles. Recruited for those very qualities, the worst of the lot from the lowest prisons and penal colonies of the nation and the world. Brought here—and believe me the prisons are only too glad to be rid of them—to take part in a program that will prove our deliverance from blind enslavement to man’s essential nature. Look at them.”

  The group’s movements in the yard were well drilled, disciplined but unenthusiastic, if not sluggish, although none seemed to be performing under any sort of duress.

  “Not so long ago those men could barely share common living space with other human beings for an hour without committing senseless acts of violence. The problem of crime. The problem of intolerance. The problem of brutality. Do you see? They all spring from the same fountainhead. Here and now, for the first time, they are completely rehabilitated, well provided for, and willing to give an honest day’s work.”

  And so Bodger Nuggins was released from Newgate, thought Doyle. The intention seemed admirable enough—not all that different in conception, if not in scale, from what Jack Sparks tried to accomplish with men in the London underworld. But what was their method?

  “How?” asked Doyle. “How is it done?”

  “Direct intervention,” said Chandros.

  “What does that mean?”

  “One of our colleagues has been studying this problem for many years. He has come to the conclusion that the fundamental aspects of personality begin in the brain. The brain is a physical organ, like the lungs or the liver, and it can be refashioned in ways we are only beginning to understand. You’re a doctor. We believe that this low level of humanity—should we call it that? Why not?—is nothing more than a medical problem, a disease, like cholera or meningitis. It is a purely physical defect, and should be treated accordingly.”

  “Treated in what way?”

  “I’m not familiar with the precise medical terms; the Professor will be happy to give you the particulars—”

  “Treated surgically?”

  “I am interested in results, Doctor. You see before you the more than encouraging results we have begun to realize with this program, and not just with those factory workers: The entire household staff at Ravenscar is comprised of our successful efforts—our graduates, if you will. Let me assure you of this: Give a man a second chance at life, and he will be as grateful as a hound at your feet.”

  A second chance at life. Doyle felt his head spinning. The gray hoods. The ghouls at the museum. Automatons deprived of a will of their own. Doyle nodded agreeably to Chandros, turned away, and gripped the rail, trying not to betray his profound revulsion.

  That’s what they wanted the land for, Doyle realized—isolation to do this ungodly work. Bodger Nuggins caught wind of what lay in store and escaped, and they tracked him down and killed him. Something told Doyle he might have been one of the lucky ones. Whatever horrors had been committed on those sorry men below, the real monsters were here beside him on the balcony.

  The last of the sunlight faded swiftly. The convicts in the enclosure were being marched off to another part of the compound. Doyle looked down at the central courtyard, his eye caught by a single wagon pulling in to what looked like a service entrance. As the driver dismounted and two servants moved forward to unload the delivery, a body clinging to the undercarriage rolled out from beneath the wagon and slipped into the shadows. None of the sentries or servants noticed the intruder made his move. Doyle couldn’t make out the face from this distance, but something unmistakably familiar registered about the way the figure moved.

  Jack.

  A deep bell rang somewhere inside the house.

  “Ah. Dinner will be served shortly,” said Chandros. “Why don’t you see if that charming companion of yours is ready to join us, Doctor?”

  “Yes. Good,” said Doyle.

  “We’ll see you at table then.”

  Doyle nodded. He heard the door open behind him; Chandros and Drummond moved inside. Doyle scanned the courtyard for another glimpse of the intruder but saw no trace of him. He waited a few moments, then followed the others inside.

  Doyle stepped quickly to his room, where the formidable servant was once again stationed at the door. As he entered, Doyle caught the blank, reflectionless plane of the man’s eyes. They were as cold and lifeless as those of a fish on a platter. The door closed silently behind him.

  chapter eighteen

  DINNER IS SERVED

  SEATED BEFORE A VANITY, EILEEN USED THE MIRROR TO APPLY the lightest blush to her lips. She wore her hair in an elaborate chignon. A choker studded with what appeared to be diamonds encircled her neck. The form-hugging, off-the-shoulder black velvet dress their hosts had provided elevated her innate glamour to a classical level.

  “Fitting they give me a dress in the bargain,” she said, “seeing as how they ruined mine. Fasten me in the back, would you, Arthur?”

  Doyle bent to attend to the disjointed hook and eye. She wore a subtle, entrancing perfume. He kissed her shoulder once, softly.

  “They left makeup and jewelry as well.” She touched the diamond earrings she was wearing. “These are not paste. What on earth are they up to?”

  “Why don’t we go find out?” said Doyle, moving to the davenport and, out of her sight, retrieving the syringes. He slipped them into his breast pocket, making certain they didn’t create a giveaway bulge in the line.

  “Who else is going to be there?”

  “More than they bargained for,” said Doyle, lowering his voice. “Jack’s somewhere inside.”

  She looked at him. “Good. We won’t give up without a fight.”

  “I’ll try and keep you as far from harm’s way—”

  “Arthur, the bastards killed eighteen of my friends—”

  “I won’t let them hurt you—”

  “Among them my fiancé. He was sitting beside me at the séance that night, playing my brother.”

  Doyle collected himself. “Dennis.”

  “Yes. Dennis.”

  “I had no idea. I’m so terribly sorry.”

  Eileen nodded and turned away. Moments later she picked up a small black purse and presented herself. “Do I look all right? Lie if you must.”

  “Stunning. God’s truth.”

  She smiled brightly, illuminating the room. He offered his arm, she took it, and they exited to the hall. The servant stood aside as they made for the stairs. Music from below was accompanied by the buzz of conversation.

  “I’ve a four-inch hat pin in my hair,” she whispered. “Tell me when, and I won’t hesitate to use it.”

  “Don’t be shy about applying it where it does the most damage.”

  “Have I ever struck you as shy, Arthur?”

  “No, dear,” he said.

  Eileen wrapped her arm
securely around Doyle’s, and they started down the grand staircase. The sight below was rare and sumptuous; lit by enormous candelabras, the table was set with fine silver and crystal. A string quartet played in the corner. Eight chairs occupied, guests dressed as if for a royal occasion. Sir John Chandros sat at the head of the table, the seat of honor empty to his right. As he spied Doyle and Eileen descending, conversation died, and attention shifted toward the stairs.

  “Smile, darling,” whispered Doyle.

  “‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of Death rode the six hundred.…’” murmured Eileen under her breath. “Oh, my Lord…”

  “What is it?”

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” she said, smiling and nodding toward the end of the table opposite to Chandros.

  At the prompting of the silver-haired gent to his right, a man in his early twenties rose to greet them; of medium height, portly and pale, pinched features distorted by a dissolute bloat. A wispy mustache laden with wax and a goatish goatee intended a rakish flair that failed to convince, suggesting instead overreaching immaturity. Bedecked with ribbons, medals, and a sash, a constellation of new stains blotted his immaculately starched white dickey. As Doyle and Eileen reached the bottom of the stairs, Bishop Pillphrock, in High Anglican surplice, steered them straight toward the young man, who waited as patiently as a well-trained ape.

  “May I present His Royal Highness Prince Albert Victor Edward, the Duke of Clarence,” said the Bishop, with extreme unction. “Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle.”

  “How do you do?” said the Duke blankly. Nothing registered in his eyes, set near together with the oafish glaze of a guinea pig.

  “Your Highness,” said Doyle.

  “Miss Eileen Temple,” said the Bishop.

  “How do you do?” He displayed no spark of recognition. The man must be ill, thought Doyle; Eileen was not easily forgotten, even at a glance, and the Duke had once spent an entire evening in vigorous pursuit of her.