Ruler of the Night

by David Morrell

The smoke sank lower.

  Emily coughed.

  “Breathe through the wet sheet,” Becker told her.

  A bigger chunk of burning wood fell from the ceiling, thrusting a huge wave across the pool.

  “Get under the tables,” Ryan urged. “There’s room enough to keep our heads above water.”

  Ryan crouched, pulled De Quincey under the table, and held him in a floating position.

  “Here’s another sip,” he said, raising the bottle to the tiny man’s lips.

  A fiery beam almost struck the tables, hurling water over them.

  “Hold tightly to the bottle,” De Quincey said. “Don’t spill it.”

  “I promise to guard it,” Ryan said.

  The smoke was almost upon them.

  “Put the wet sheets over your heads,” Becker urged.

  Ryan used one sheet to cover both him and De Quincey. The rippling light coming through the sheet revealed that De Quincey’s face had started to lose some of its anguish.

  “Again,” the little man said.

  “Just a sip,” Ryan told him. “Then you’ll need to wait for a while.”

  “Yes. Yes. Just a sip.”

  Ryan gave it to him, then corked the bottle and put it in his coat pocket.

  Despite the wet sheet over them, the smoke stung Ryan’s throat. He coughed again. So did De Quincey.

  So did Emily, Becker, and the German.

  Objects clanged off the tables and splashed into the pool.

  De Quincey told Ryan, “The German said that two Russians were hunting him. He said he was a doctor. That’s the most I was able to learn.”

  “Why would two Russians be hunting a German doctor?” Ryan asked.

  “Indeed.” De Quincey coughed. “Another sip, please.”

  “Not for half an hour.” Ryan felt like a father speaking sternly to his young boy.

  More objects fell and hissed. More waves swept over them amid the thunder of collapsing debris.

  “I’m having trouble breathing,” De Quincey said.

  “As am I,” Ryan admitted.

  “Father, are you all right?” Emily’s voice came muffled from the wet sheet that covered her head.

  “Much better now that I have my medicine. And you, Emily?”

  “If we survive this, what is the one thing that you’d most like to do?”

  De Quincey coughed. “Go to the chophouse in Soho again. To finish the dinner that the four of us so looked forward to on Thursday night.”

  Becker’s muffled voice joined the conversation. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  A cluster of objects cascaded into the pool. The sound of their impact against the metal table was deafening. It threatened to collapse.

  After stifling a cough, De Quincey said something in German.

  The man they were trying to protect responded in kind.

  “What did you ask him?” Ryan wanted to know.

  “Where we should take him if we survive this.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “That Dr. Wainwright would know. Another sip, please.”

  A half an hour hadn’t passed, but Ryan felt heat around him and thought, What difference will it make? We’re all going to die anyhow.

  With the two of them sheltered beneath the wet sheet, Ryan uncorked the bottle and gave De Quincey another sip.

  The reference to half an hour made Ryan think of the Benson chronometer in his trouser pocket beneath the water. Imagining how much his mother would have admired it, he sadly concluded that the glorious timepiece was now ruined.

  De Quincey murmured something.

  “I didn’t hear you,” Ryan said.

  “Lord Palmerston.”

  “What about him?”

  “The German doctor. The Russians.”

  “I still don’t—”

  “This has something to do with the war.”

  A massive object crashed into the pool. The wave that swept over Ryan nearly submerged him. He struggled to keep De Quincey’s head above water.

  The smoke and the heat were becoming unbearable.

  “Emily,” Becker said, his voice muffled. “Are you still all right?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Emily?”

  “I feel…drowsy.”

  “Poke the stitches on your cheek,” Becker said urgently.

  She didn’t reply.

  “Poke them as hard as you can. The pain might keep you awake.”

  Again, she didn’t reply.

  “Emily?” Becker asked with greater concern.

  Ryan heard splashing and raised the drenched sheet. Through smoke, he saw Emily sliding under the water.

  Becker grabbed her and pulled her up. “Emily, breathe!”

  There is no such thing as forgetting, the Opium-Eater had written. A thousand events impose a veil between our consciousness and the secret inscriptions of the mind, but those inscriptions remain forever, just as the stars withdraw from the light of day but are waiting to be revealed when the night returns.

  Floating on his back, supported in Ryan’s arms, feeling the laudanum course through his veins, De Quincey couldn’t stop his legs from twitching as they had a lifetime earlier when he’d lain next to ten-year-old Carolyn beneath a horseman’s cloak in the gloomy, empty house in Soho. Starving, freezing, he’d slept and wakened, slept and wakened, often not knowing the difference between the two conditions, just as he now believed everything happening to him was an opium nightmare that he currently suffered in Edinburgh, that he’d never come to London in December, that the events of the previous three months had never occurred.

  Or perhaps that opium nightmare was part of another nightmare, one that he endured as he slept and twitched and moaned in starving, freezing anguish next to Carolyn beneath that horseman’s cloak. Perhaps the rest of his life existed only in his imagination and he was still a seventeen-year-old beggar trying to sleep on that bare, cold floor next to ten-year-old Carolyn who was haunted by rats and ghosts.

  Layer upon layer. Perhaps all of this was happening after he and his beloved Ann spent a numbingly cold day begging in Oxford Street without success. Unusually light-headed, unable to tolerate food, he stumbled around the corner to Soho Square, where he slumped on the steps of a house and rested his head on Ann’s bosom. He sank from her arms and fell onto the steps, certain that he was dying. Uttering a cry of terror, Ann ran back to Oxford Street and returned with a glass of spiced wine that she’d bought with some of her few pennies even though she could scarcely afford the necessities of life herself and knew that he would never be able to repay her. The spiced wine restored him sufficiently that she managed to get him to his feet and take him to the wretched Greek Street house, where Carolyn cried out when she saw him stagger inside. She and Ann had nursed him back to as much health as he could hope for.

  Perhaps his head was still slumping away from Ann’s bosom. Perhaps he was still losing consciousness, toppling onto the steps in Soho Square.

  Something jostled him. He heard faint voices: “Water’s getting warmer,” “Air’s like a furnace,” “Can’t—”

  “Breathe, Emily!” Becker yelled as she spit out water and managed to inhale.

  Another massive burning object plunged into the pool. The wave that swept over Ryan and De Quincey filled Ryan’s nostrils. He spit out hot, gritty water.

  Next to him, Becker coughed painfully and held the drenched sheet to his and Emily’s face.

  The smoke wavered, revealing a door on the opposite wall.

  Probably the boiler room, Ryan thought. It needs to be close to the pool.

  The boiler.

  What about it? The pump. Think. The pump.

  Where does the water come from?

  Continuing to hold De Quincey in his arms, Ryan squirmed from beneath the protection of the metal table and climbed the steps from the pool. Water dripped from him, the rush of hot air around him almost overwhelming.

  “Becker, bring Emily and the Germa
n!”

  “Where are you going?”

  “It might be our only chance!” Ryan shouted amid the roar.

  A chunk of burning wood walloped onto the tiles in front of him. He staggered around it, stepped over a fiery plank, winced from the burning sensation that came through his trouser legs, and kicked debris away from the door.

  “Becker, where are you?” Ryan couldn’t get a grip on the doorknob while holding De Quincey. “I need you to—”

  Becker rushed in front of him, covered the doorknob with the wet sheet, and turned it, but the door wouldn’t open.

  “Something’s blocking it!”

  Becker raised a boot and kicked, then kicked again. The door jolted open far enough for Becker to urge Emily through. Ryan went next, squeezing sideways with De Quincey. Becker and the German followed.

  The instant they entered the room, a post thundered down behind them, thrusting flames and sparks into the room.

  “Sean, your trousers!” Becker yelled. He flung the wet sheet around Ryan’s legs, smothering the steam that rose from them.

  The light from the fire revealed the boiler and a pump, crushed by a fallen beam.

  “There!” Ryan shouted, pointing.

  Beyond the boiler was a low, narrow tunnel made of stone blocks. It provided access for several pipes to enter the building.

  “We’ll need to crawl! Mr. De Quincey, can you do that?”

  “I crawl perfectly.”

  Ryan set De Quincey down, sank to his hands and knees, and squirmed forward into the darkness. The smell of moisture and mold was strong. Pipes scraped his right shoulder. The stone ceiling grazed his back. His hands touched water leaking from one of the pipes.

  Behind him, he heard labored breathing as De Quincey, Emily, Becker, and the German struggled after him. The dark tunnel became lower and narrower, squeezing him on every side. He had difficulty drawing enough air into his lungs.

  “Sean,” Becker murmured with effort from behind him, “if the tunnel gets any smaller…”

  Ryan didn’t reply. He just kept squirming forward into the unseen.

  “Father?” Emily asked. “Are you all right?”

  “I’ve endured worse opium nightmares than this,” De Quincey assured her.

  The right knee on Ryan’s trousers tore open from the rough surface of the stone blocks.

  His head struck something.

  A dead end, he thought in a panic. But then he groped forward and touched stone steps.

  “Sean, why did you stop?” Emily asked, her voice reverberating off the close walls.

  Ryan felt to the right and found that the pipes ascended from the ground, presumably from a spring. He dragged himself up the steps and reached a hatch, but when he tried to work its handle, it didn’t move.

  Fighting to breathe, he pressed his back against the hatch and strained upward, but he still couldn’t budge it.

  Something rattled on the other side.

  A lock! he realized.

  He pawed along the sides of the hatch and found two hinges on the right. He pulled his knife from beneath his right trouser leg, wedged it beneath the top hinge, and pried.

  The hinge loosened, the tunnel’s dampness having softened the wood.

  “Sean, what’s wrong?” Becker asked.

  Too breathless to answer, Ryan pried with greater urgency. He felt a surge of emotion when the hinge fell away, clattering onto the stone steps.

  He shifted his knife to the bottom hinge, digging and twisting with the blade. If he’d had air in his lungs, he’d have shouted in triumph when the hinge dropped free, also clattering down the steps.

  He braced his back against the hatch, strained upward, and, with a sudden cracking sound, the hatch burst open.

  Breathing greedily, he crawled from the opening, pulled De Quincey after him, and slumped onto the cold, wet ground. As Emily and Becker struggled from the tunnel, Ryan blinked from the harsh light of the inferno roaring near him.

  Then the German’s head appeared in the exit from the tunnel, and Ryan lunged to shove him back inside.

  The German exclaimed in fright.

  “Sean, what are you doing?” Becker asked.

  “The Russians will be watching. To stop them from following him, we need to make them believe he’s dead. Mr. De Quincey, tell this man to stay in the tunnel until I work out how to do this.”

  De Quincey did what Ryan requested, translating the instructions into German.

  A wave of heat swept over Ryan as a section of the burning building crashed inward.

  “Mr. De Quincey, tell the German to lie perfectly still. Becker, help me drag him out as if he’s seriously hurt and probably dead.”

  After De Quincey translated, Ryan grabbed the German’s right arm while Becker grabbed his left. They pulled him from the opening.

  “Emily, pretend to look for a pulse. Do what you’d normally do to determine if someone is alive.”

  Without a pause, Emily followed his instructions. She felt the German’s wrists and neck. She listened to his chest, put a hand below his nostrils, and examined his eyes. In an intimate act that puzzled Ryan, she even felt beneath the German’s trouser cuffs, touching the lower part of his legs.

  “Now stand up and shake your head. Raise your hands and lower them as if to say there’s nothing to be done,” Ryan said.

  Again, she obeyed.

  A figure ran toward them. Ryan prepared to defend himself but then realized that the man rushing toward him was Dr. Wainwright.

  “Thank heaven you’re safe,” Wainwright said, then faltered at the sight of the man on the ground.

  “What do you know about him?” Ryan asked. “He’s a German doctor who was hiding in the clinic.”

  “A German doctor? I have no idea what he—”

  “Before you tangle yourself in lies,” Ryan said, “he told us that if he survived, you’d be able to inform us where to take him.”

  “I…My God, he looks dead.”

  “Do you in fact know where to take him?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Wainwright said, “Yes. If he’s dead, though, what’s the point?”

  “He isn’t dead, but we want the Russians to think he is.”

  “You mean you also know about the Russians?”

  “Pretend to examine him. Emily already did and acted as if she thought he couldn’t be helped. Now it’s your turn to examine him.”

  “Examine him?”

  “That’s what I said. If the Russians are watching, we don’t want them to have any doubts.”

  Wainwright did what he was told, but he didn’t act with the confidence that Emily had shown, and he didn’t put a hand under the German’s nostrils or examine his pupils.

  “Aren’t you going to feel his ankles?” Emily asked.

  “Why in the world would I do that?”

  “One of the first indications of death is the loss of heat in the lower legs,” Emily answered.

  Wainwright looked confused.

  “Emily, perhaps you won’t need to send the telegram we discussed,” De Quincey said.

  “Indeed, Father.”

  “Telegram?” Becker asked. “What telegram?”

  “This man doesn’t know what’s he’s doing,” Emily told the group. “Today, Father and I planned to send a telegram to the University of Edinburgh inquiring if they had a record of Dr. Wainwright graduating from its medical school. We can save ourselves the expenditure from our meager finances. Even the most incompetent physician would know all the ways to determine if someone is dead.”

  “Who are you?” Ryan asked Wainwright.

  Wainwright hesitated. “No one.” His voice wavered. His silvery mustache no longer appeared lustrous. “As of tonight, I’m no one.”

  Another massive section of the building collapsed into the flames.

  “Mr. De Quincey, please tell the German to allow us to carry him as if he’s a corpse,” Ryan said.

  De Quincey did so. “Inspector, may
I now have more medicine?” he added in English.

  Ryan reached into his sodden coat and gave the bottle to him. Then he gripped the German’s arms while Becker grabbed the feet. They lifted him and walked in a stooped position, suggesting the awkwardness of carrying a deadweight.

  Blessedly, the air became colder as they lurched away from the blaze.

  “Emily, we brought your travel bags from Lord Cavendale’s house,” Becker said.

  “Did you hear that, Father?” she asked. “We’ll soon have dry clothes.”

  But De Quincey lingered as Wainwright stared hopelessly at the burning clinic.

  “Mr. Wainwright”—De Quincey pointedly didn’t address him as Doctor—“you told Emily and me that members of the peerage felt the need for this clinic and encouraged you to open it.”

  Wainwright kept staring at the inferno, its flames illuminating his features, emphasizing their despair.

  “Am I correct in concluding that it was actually Carolyn who encouraged you to open the clinic and that it is in fact she who owns it?” De Quincey asked.

  “Carolyn,” Wainwright said.

  “Am I also correct that it was she who asked you to hide the German, at the request of Lord Palmerston?” De Quincey continued.

  “Everything’s ruined.”

  “We don’t have much time. We must find a means to speed the German away,” De Quincey said.

  TWELVE

  THE FIELD-WORKER AND THE ADDER

  At six thirty in the morning, Commissioner Mayne arrived on the first train out of London. Late the previous night, a messenger had come to his house in Belgravia’s Chester Square, knocking solidly on his door. Wakened, Mayne had dressed quickly and accompanied the messenger to the prime minister’s residence, where he was ordered to go to Sedwick Hill and tell Ryan and Becker to report to him at once.

  No explanation was provided. On reflection, however, Mayne wasn’t surprised, given the way Lord Palmerston and his home secretary had arranged for Daniel Harcourt’s documents to disappear before the police could use them to investigate Harcourt’s murder. Now the prime minister seemed determined to restrict another area of the investigation.

  Even fewer people were on the train than Commissioner Mayne had expected. After the guard unlocked the otherwise empty compartment, Mayne stepped onto the lonely platform and saw a dark cloud of smoke hovering outside town.