Ruler of the Night

by David Morrell

  “But I do see something. Perhaps because of laudanum, it’s only in my mind.”

  “What are you talking about, Father?”

  De Quincey extended the arm that held the lantern. At the level of his knees, several eyes gleamed from the light’s reflection.

  Emily stumbled back. Something growled.

  “Dogs!” Emily said.

  The eyes moved closer—three pairs, four, five.

  “The odor of the blood must have attracted them! They want the corpse!” De Quincey said.

  Another dog growled.

  “Maybe they also want us!” Emily said. She waved her arms and shouted, “Go!”

  The eyes vanished as the dogs turned and darted away.

  “That’s right!” Emily yelled. “Leave us alone!”

  But now the eyes reappeared, floating back to where they’d been.

  “I couldn’t help this wretched soul, but by God, I’ll protect what’s left of him!” Emily shouted.

  Teeth suddenly flashed, snapping at her.

  Emily lurched back so quickly that she almost fell.

  “Gravel!” De Quincey said.

  He picked up a handful and hurled it. They heard numerous yelps, and the eyes again vanished as the dogs scurried away.

  “Yes!” Emily said. She grabbed one handful of gravel and then another, throwing it with all her strength.

  De Quincey heard more yelps.

  But then he heard more growls. Turning, he saw yellow eyes drifting toward him from the opposite direction.

  “Emily, I’ll take this side while you take the other! Keep throwing gravel!”

  As he held the lantern with his left hand, he found the strength to grab stones with his right, throwing them, hearing them clatter on rails while many of them thumped against flesh. He wore gloves, but the rough edges of the gravel tore the tips off the gloves.

  “Blast you!” Emily yelled as she threw the gravel. “I won’t let you have this man!”

  “Make as much noise as possible!” De Quincey told her with effort. His arm cramping, he began to sing a hymn that he remembered from the terrible events in February. “‘The son of God goes forth to war / A kingly crown to gain!’ Sing it, Emily! As loudly as you can! ‘The son of God goes forth to war!’”

  Their bellowing voices rebounded off the curved walls.

  De Quincey abruptly switched to a hodgepodge of Shakespeare. “‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here!’ But I shall send you all back to hell! I shall be a dog of war!”

  “Father!” Emily called out in warning.

  The echoing roar of their shouts was nothing compared to the fierce din that rushed toward them. Suddenly the entrance to the tunnel was blocked by darkness except for two red lights that grew larger and larger.

  Emily grabbed her father and tugged him down onto the gravel a moment before an express locomotive raced from the north toward London. The fury of the wind it created gusted at De Quincey’s coat. He felt the ground beneath him shudder and clamped his hands over his ears. Carriage after carriage rushed past, the clatter and clang of myriad wheels adding to the chaos. Thick smoke filled the tunnel, sparks burning De Quincey’s forehead. The air became so dense with swirling soot that he couldn’t breathe. He coughed and choked, scrunching his eyes shut against the grit that threatened to clog them.

  All at once the clatter and clang were gone. As the smoke and the cinders settled around him, De Quincey opened his raw eyes and saw the red lamps at the end of the train hurtling away into the night toward London. The tunnel’s thundering echo subsided until the only sound he heard was the ringing in his ears.

  “Are you all right, Emily?”

  As the two of them struggled to their feet, De Quincey raised the lantern. The eyes were no longer in evidence.

  “The train must have frightened the dogs away,” he said.

  Then Emily said, “No.”

  The eyes reappeared, dark shapes stalking near them. The growls came closer.

  Teeth snapped at Emily.

  “Damn you!” She kicked, her boot striking a dog’s nose. With a bark of pain, the dog bolted away.

  “Until tonight, Emily, I never heard you say ‘blast’ or ‘damn.’”

  “You might hear worse, Father.”

  A dog bit into his trouser cuff and tugged, nearly pulling him off his feet.

  His chest tight, De Quincey hopped on one foot, swung the lantern, and slammed it against the dog’s head. Stunned, the dog released its grip and staggered away.

  De Quincey drew a painful breath as he reached for more stones, but what his fingers grasped instead was a piece of metal. Raising it to the lantern, he saw that it was the end of a broken rod that must have fallen from a passing train.

  He mustered the energy to bang it repeatedly against a rail on the tracks. The angry ringing noise he created was so unfamiliar that the eyes darted back.

  “It’s working, Father!”

  But as he kept striking the rod against the iron rail, his heart raced with such force that he feared he might collapse.

  “I don’t have the strength to keep doing it, Emily!”

  Slumping to the gravel, he handed her the rod. Sweat dripped from his face and soaked his clothes.

  Emily pounded the rod again and again on the rail, but the earsplitting, high-pitched sound of the impact only made the dogs hesitate and assess the danger.

  De Quincey fought to calm the frenzy of his heart.

  “They’re coming back!” Emily said.

  Certain that he was in an opium nightmare, that none of this was happening, that he was asleep in Edinburgh and had never come to London, De Quincey forced himself to stand.

  He took off his overcoat.

  “Father, what are you doing?”

  “I love you,” he told her.

  He raised the glass on the lantern and stuck the hem of his coat into the flame.

  “Father!”

  Gripping the coat’s collar, he swung the burning hem toward the dogs. The fire illuminated the matted fur and ulcerating sores on the grotesque animals, some without an ear, others with maggots dripping from them, all looking like creatures from hell.

  Certain that his heart couldn’t beat any faster without killing him, he shouted, “Go back to hell!” and flailed the coat at the animals, sparks flying. Smoke carried the stench of scorched fur. His speeding pulse made him dizzy.

  Emily followed his example, removing her coat, igniting its hem. As he sank to his knees, she was suddenly next to him, lunging toward the dogs, swinging the fiery garment.

  Lights rushed into the tunnel. For an instant, De Quincey feared that another train was coming, but these lights swayed as though they were being carried by people who ran. Voices accompanied them, men shouting, “Go, you bastards! Get away!”

  The lanterns showed truncheons rising and falling. Dogs cried out and fled, their shadows becoming silhouettes that disappeared at the tunnel’s mouth.

  “Are the two of you all right?” a man asked, rushing closer. His lantern revealed his railway guard’s uniform. “Oh my, look at you! Sir, you have blood on your face. Your gloves are covered with blood too. So are yours, miss! You’re both layered with soot. What happened to your coats? They’re almost ashes.”

  “We didn’t think you’d ever arrive,” Emily said.

  “We had trouble finding a doctor, miss.”

  “But I won’t be needed,” a man standing over the body said. “No one could recover from injuries as severe as these.”

  “I felt for a pulse,” Emily told him. “He is indeed beyond help.”

  The doctor gave her a puzzled look, apparently unable to imagine that a woman would know how to detect a pulse.

  “It’s important to stay away from the body,” Emily told them. “The police will need everything to be undisturbed so they can investigate.”

  “I’m the local constable,” another man said, stepping forward.

  “Then you understand everything ne
eds to remain the way it is so that Inspector Ryan can do his work,” Emily told him.

  “Yes, the train’s guard said you were emphatic that Detective Inspector Ryan needed to be summoned from Scotland Yard and that the telegram should also say Miss De Quincey and her father are here. De Quincey? That name sounds familiar.”

  Feeling the rats reinvading his stomach, De Quincey said, “Emily, please, my medicine.”

  When she removed the laudanum bottle and the teaspoon from her skirt, he ignored the spoon, took the bottle, and drank from it.

  Recognizing the kind of bottle it was, the three men gaped.

  “Now the name comes to me,” the constable said. “You’re the Opium-Eater.”

  TWO

  “IT’S SOMETHING THAT PEOPLE

  DIE FOR”

  Unmarried Scotland Yard detectives had the option of sleeping in a police dormitory in the Whitehall area, not far from the headquarters for the Metropolitan Police Force. The former private residence consisted of several rooms filled with narrow beds.

  Ryan later determined that it was ten minutes after eleven when a constable woke him, speaking softly so as not to disturb everyone else. “Sorry to do this, Inspector, but you have a telegram.”

  “Telegram?” Ryan needed just a moment to gather his thoughts. He’d felt so distressed by the sudden departure of Emily and her father that sleep had not come easily. “Who sent it?”

  “The Great Northern Railway.”

  “The railway? Why would…”

  Ryan got out of bed and stepped into his trousers with a minimum of sound. He followed the constable to a hallway and shut the door to prevent its lamp from waking the others.

  He read the telegram once. Then he read it again.

  “Thank you,” he said, concealing his agitation.

  He reentered the room and walked through the shadows to the corner where Becker slept.

  When he put a hand on Becker’s shoulder, Becker’s eyes opened.

  “Emily’s in trouble,” Ryan said.

  They hurried downstairs to an office.

  “There aren’t any trains at this hour,” Ryan told the constable on duty. “We need a police wagon.”

  “I wish I had one for you, but all of them are being used.”

  Ryan turned to Becker. “Looks like we’re going to spend our reward money.”

  They rushed outside, barely taking time to button their coats against the night’s chill. With Parliament sitting until after midnight, traffic in Whitehall was scant at this hour. But a short run brought them to the Strand with its brightly lit theaters, taverns, chophouses, and, most important, numerous cabs.

  “We’re with Scotland Yard,” Ryan told a driver as two well-dressed men stepped out of his vehicle. He showed his badge.

  “Always ’appy to ’elp a detective inspector,” the driver said. “Where to?”

  “It’s a distance.”

  “As long as you pay, I’ll get you there.”

  Becker named their destination.

  “But that’s ten miles!” the driver objected.

  “Here’s two sovereigns,” Ryan said. He and Becker each handed the man a coin. “You won’t earn that much driving around London tonight.”

  “And ten miles back. My ’orse’ll be worthless for tomorrow.”

  “Another two sovereigns,” Ryan said. He and Becker dug into their pockets. Four pounds was probably more than the driver had ever seen at one time.

  “Scotland Yard must have an awfully important reason to get there,” the driver said.

  “The most important reason in the world,” Becker told him.

  “Well, nothin’ is more important than a pretty woman.”

  “Exactly,” Ryan said.

  “In that case, you’d better ’ang on, gents!”

  From his perch at the back of the cab, the driver cracked his whip, urging his horse forward.

  Ryan and Becker sat tensely, neither of them saying a word. Forty years old and twenty-five years old, respectively, both of them knew all too well that they were attracted to the same twenty-two-year-old woman.

  Late at night, trying to sleep, Ryan often reminded himself that he was almost twice Emily’s age and that his feelings toward her ought to resemble those of a brother. Becker—so close in years to Emily—was the obviously appropriate suitor. But try as he might, Ryan couldn’t subdue his attraction toward her. During the rare times when he believed he’d succeeded in thinking of Emily only as a sister, his resolve would crumble the moment he again encountered her blue eyes and the ringlets in her light brown hair—and her spirit, her wonderfully exasperating independent spirit.

  The cab reached the factories and slums of London’s northern outskirts. After stopping to pay the toll at the turnpike gate, they hurried along a dark, deserted road, its pulverized stone surface allowing the horse to maintain its footing in the dim illumination from the cab’s exterior lamps.

  No matter how swiftly the vehicle moved, Becker tapped his fingers impatiently on his knees while Ryan stared outside. The haze dispersed, revealing shadowy trees, fields, and streams.

  But all Ryan saw was Emily’s face.

  “I pray she’s all right,” Becker said.

  “If she isn’t, someone will pay dearly,” Ryan vowed.

  “Indeed,” Becker said firmly.

  “You ’ired the right man, gents,” the driver yelled down. “Hear that church bell marking the hour? I got you ’ere in ninety minutes.”

  Ryan frowned as the cab’s two lamps revealed stacks of bricks and piles of sand along the road. Weathered boards dangled from the exposed frames of cottages. Heaps of debris seemed everywhere.

  “What happened to this place?” Ryan shouted.

  “The railway!” the driver called down. “Land speculators started buildin’ cottages for people who want to live in places that are now closer to London. The speculators got beyond themselves and built so many cottages there’s no one to buy ’em. My brother was a carpenter here, but he got put out of work and had to join the army to eat, God ’elp ’im. Now they sent ’im to the war.”

  Ahead, Ryan saw a cluster of shops and houses next to railway tracks. The streets were unpaved and lit by a few old-fashioned lamps that had coal-oil reservoirs.

  The moment the cab stopped, he and Becker jumped out and hurried across a rumbling wooden platform. The station had only a ticket office, a telegraph office—both of them dark—and a waiting room, the lamps of which were illuminated. Ryan glanced through its windows, but the room looked deserted.

  A station guard stood outside.

  “I’m Detective Inspector Ryan from Scotland Yard. This is Detective Sergeant Becker. Where are Emily De Quincey and her father?”

  “In there,” the guard told them, gesturing toward the waiting room.

  But when Ryan entered, he didn’t see them.

  “Where—”

  Becker pointed, and Ryan saw that Emily and her father were stretched out on benches.

  They weren’t moving. Afraid that they’d been killed, Ryan hurried to them, only to stop in relief as Emily raised her head. His relief changed to shock when he saw that her face was dark with soot. Her bonnet was askew. She didn’t have a coat. Her bloomer dress was torn and grimy. Her hands were covered with blood.

  Then her father sat up, and he looked even worse, with blood as well as soot on his face, the whites of his eyes a stark contrast.

  “My God,” Becker exclaimed.

  “A man was murdered on the train,” Emily said. “His body’s in a railway tunnel. We tried to protect it from dogs.”

  This information came so quickly, Ryan could say only “What?”

  As Emily described what she and her father had done in the tunnel, the two detectives looked at each other in astonishment.

  “You did all that to keep the dogs from destroying evidence?” Becker asked.

  “We didn’t want to disappoint you,” Emily answered.

  “You can’t poss
ibly disappoint us.”

  “Perhaps I have,” De Quincey said.

  “Under the circumstances, I can’t imagine how.” Ryan stirred the coals in the fireplace, trying to chase the dampness from the room. “We need blankets for you.”

  “I removed an object from the murder scene,” De Quincey said.

  Caught by surprise, Ryan turned. “You did what?”

  “A guard told us that the train had to keep moving, that the carriage in which the attack occurred couldn’t be left at this station.”

  De Quincey raised a laudanum bottle to his lips and tilted it all the way up to drain a final precious drop of opium.

  Ryan looked at Emily and silently expressed his regret.

  “The guard said that the carriage couldn’t be brought back here until noon,” De Quincey continued. “One door on the murder compartment was so damaged that it couldn’t be locked. I had no confidence that during fifteen hours, the murder scene would remain intact as it journeyed from town to town, then to Manchester, and then back here. Surely the news would spread. The first murder on an English train—surely the place where it happened would attract crowds. When people discovered that one of the doors couldn’t be locked, would their curiosity prompt them to open it and go inside and touch things? Would they want souvenirs? I told the guard to lift me under my chest and legs and insert me into the compartment so that I could see without disturbing any evidence. I found a blood-covered umbrella. According to the guard, there should have been a leather document case also, but it wasn’t there. Then I noticed something under a seat. At first, I thought it might be a trick of the lamplight, so I instructed the guard to lower me near the floor. But it wasn’t a trick of the lamplight.”

  De Quincey reached into a pocket. The object he withdrew was yellow and flat and round, almost filling the palm of his hand.

  “Certainly someone would have taken this souvenir,” De Quincey said.

  For a moment, the only sound was the crackling of coals in the fireplace.

  “Good heavens, a gold watch,” Becker marveled.