The Serpent's Shadow em-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Seein' as there's no connection with you and Mister Parkening—it seems he's gone missing, miss." The detective was very good at concealing his thoughts behind that walrus mustache, but Maya saw his eyes peering at her keenly, waiting for her reaction. Fortunately, since she had nothing whatsoever to hide, it was an honest one of surprise.

  "Good heavens! Missing? But how? When? Oh, dear. Is Doctor Clayton-Smythe all right?"

  "Happens he went out last night, and didn't come home at all, miss," the detective said with a certain subdued relish, but a very inquisitive and predatory gleam in his blue eyes. "His man alarmed the police this morning, thinking his master must have met with harm."

  "Oh, no—how horrible!" she exclaimed. "And certainly if he'd met with an accident, he'd have been taken to his uncle's hospital immediately—oh, heavens!" Her tone took on annoyance as well as concern. "Oh, these young men will go out on their amusements, no matter what a doctor tells them! I swear to you, if it wasn't for young men behaving foolishly, I wouldn't have half the number of patients I see!"

  Now the policeman chuckled, and there was sympathy in his voice. "I must agree with you, miss. If it wasn't for high-spirited young men, there wouldn't be no need for a quarter of the men on the Force."

  She sighed. "I can't think what to suggest to you. I suppose there's no chance he could have come over ill and be safely in bed at a friend's flat?"

  "We've checked that, miss," the detective replied, the keen look (which struck Maya as very like that of Mala with a pigeon in view) leaving his eyes. The corners of his mouth turned up a very little, and the hunting look was replaced by a marginally warmer expression. "None of his friends have seen him. We're going back over his movements, and—" He hesitated, and then had the grace to look embarrassed, "—well, there was some things said about you in his man's hearing. That's what brought me here, just on the chance that you might have had some—contact with him."

  Maya sighed again, but now with unfeigned exasperation. "Mister Parkening does not approve of females being anything other than ornamental, I suspect," she said shortly. "I shall be charitable and diplomatic, you understand, but he has been something less than polite to me within the hospital. Although he is not a doctor and has no authority there, he seems to have the opinion that his relationship with Doctor Clayton-Smythe

  gives him the right to pass judgment on everything and everyone in the hospital. I believe that his view is that the only reason for a female to intrude upon a place normally occupied by gentlemen, such as a hospital, is so that she could draw masculine attention to herself. It is an attitude I, of course, have no sympathy for." She shrugged. "He never can believe that a woman could be as dedicated to medicine as any man."

  The detective unbent just the slightest. "I believe you're correct, miss. Which is to say that the things as was said about you by Mister Parkening follow that line of reasoning, and may I say are not in keeping with the opinions of most other people. Mister Parkening seems to have had a what-you-call—a prejudice where you were concerned. Didn't seem likely that anything he spouted was true, but we have to check everything out, if you take my meaning, most especially since it was you that found him after his fit, and not some other doctor."

  "Of course." She nodded graciously. "That—well, frankly, I wish it had been some other doctor; it was quite a shock to find a man lying on the floor of the linen closet! If I can be of any service to you in a further way, I hope you will let me know. You have my address at my own surgery?"

  The detective patted his pocket, in which she discerned the shape of a notebook he had not removed during the interview. "I don't think we'll need to speak any more with you, miss, and thank you."

  "Thank you," she replied, and saw him out, much to the relief of the patients on the benches.

  He took the cab that had been waiting for him; she walked as far as a 'bus stop, where she caught a horse-drawn conveyance and ascended to the open top where she stood a chance of getting some moving air. The sun was setting; the sky overhead brassy and unrelenting.

  So Simon Parkening is missing! How very strange.

  If he'd come to some misadventure in the slums, he should have turned up by morning. It was unlikely that any of the myriad woes that could befall a poor man would strike someone dressed the way Parkening dressed.

  No one would "shanghai" a gentleman to crew some tramp ship; for one thing, what was the point? A gentleman would be absolutely useless on board a ship as a common seaman, he wouldn't be half strong enough, nor would he have even a rudimentary grasp of how to perform manual labor. For another, there'd be sure to be a row when he went missing. By the same token, a footpad might rob gentlemen, but seldom killed them. There was sure to be a row, and rows brought police in force to hunt for the murderer. So what could have happened to him?

  Oh, I'm uncharitable enough to hope he was beaten up by some poor little whore's protector, she thought, just a bit maliciously. And I hope he's been stripped of everything and as a consequence is just now waking up in an alley or a Salvation Army clinic or a shilling doss house. Not that he'd learn any lessons from his experience, but it would be nice to think of him finding himself at the mercy of others for a change.

  Bah. He's not my problem. Let the police find him.

  Her feet had been hurting her all day; it was such a relief to finally be off them that she closed her eyes for a moment, flexing her toes inside her boots to relieve the cramp in her arches.

  If only it would rain! The heat wave had eased, but not yet broken; it was almost as if there was an invisible bowl over England, keeping the heat in.

  But just as that thought came to her, she felt the touch of a cool zephyr on her cheek. She opened her eyes, wondering if it had been her imagination, but— oh, joy!—it wasn't! Dusk had come a half-hour early, for clouds boiled up in the west and rolled slowly across the sky above her, moving ponderously toward the east.

  By heaven—a thunderstorm at last! She was so happy to see it that she didn't care if she got within doors before the rain descended.

  It was a near thing, as it turned out. Only by scampering to her door from the corner where the 'bus left her did she manage to beat the first fat droplets that splatted down into the dusty street behind her.

  Thunder shook the house as she shut the door behind her, and she went straight into her surgery office. With a rain like this coming down, the girls of the street would know that there was no use looking for men until it passed, and some of them would finally come to see their doctor. It would, without a doubt, be a very busy evening.

  The rain let up around suppertime. By bedtime, just after eleven, it had gone off altogether. Maya looked down onto the street once she had turned her light off, so her eyes could adjust to the relative darkness outside. From her bedroom window, Maya noted mist rising from the cobblestones, eddying around the gaslight in thin, snakelike coils. It looked positively uncanny, especially in light of how hot and dry it had been just this afternoon.

  Of course. One downpour won't have cooled all of the heat stored in those stones, or in the ground beneath them. By midnight the fog is going to be too thick to see in. She shivered a little. The poor girls would be out on the street by now, trying to make up for lost custom, and in a fog this thick, they were easy targets for men who wanted their fun without having to pay for it. On such nights the notorious Jack the Ripper had done his foul work—and "working girls" still faced the prospect of being murdered by their customers, even though the "Ripper" was no longer in evidence.

  There were other perils, too. Accidents of all sorts could take place in a thick fog. The one great advantage that a horse-drawn cab had in this weather was that the horse's senses were keener than the driver's. You didn't get hansoms going into the Thames, and collisions between horse-drawn vehicles going at a reasonable pace were rare. There were more and more motorcars and motorbuses on the London streets, however, and the drivers seemed to Maya to be more than reckless when it came to taking a reaso
nable pace in bad weather. There was always at least one bad collision in a fog, and when one came up as suddenly as this one, there were usually more. Far more frequent were the instances of people being run over by drivers going too fast for the conditions. By the time she got to the hospital in the morning, the wards would be buzzing with tales of the latest horrific accidents. It wasn't just motorcars either. There were terrible bicycle accidents in bad fogs, for the riders were just as heedless of conditions as the drivers of motor vehicles, and it was as easy to break one's neck on the cobbles in a tumble from a fast-moving bicycle as it was to break one's neck by being thrown from a motor.

  She turned away from the window and saw to her amusement that Charan, Sia, and Singhe were all waiting for her on her bed, wearing expectant—and slightly impatient—expressions.

  So—it's going to be cooler tonight, and apparently I am supposed to function as a warming pan! she thought with great amusement as she got into bed. At least that means that it will be cooler tonight; they're fairly good judges when it comes to weather.

  As she lay in bed with the mongooses pressed firmly, one alongside each leg, and Charan curled up in the crook of her arm, her thoughts drifted back to that odd interview at the Fleet with the police detective. Of all of the things that could have happened, she would never have expected something of that nature.

  I wonder if Parkening ever turned up again? She might have felt a slight twinge of concern about him if his malady had really been heatstroke. As it was, she wasn't the least sympathetic. If she hadn't been able to give him a good thrashing for his beggarly behavior, it seemed that Fate had stepped in to give her a hand. It was a good thing that the policeman hadn't expected a show of "womanly concern" from her, because she didn't think she'd have been able to produce a convincing expression for him.

  And just how would I have explained that, anyway? "Well, officer, the fact is he's not actually suffering from heatstroke. The man tried to force his attentions on me in that closet, and I used magic to knock him to the ground. So you don't need to worry that he's wandering about half-delirious somewhere. The worst he got from it was a well-deserved headache." Oh, that would have sounded rational! If the fellow didn't bustle me down to the police station on suspicion, he'd have hauled me into a lunatic asylum!

  She wondered if Parkening was the sort to contrive his own disappearance in order to get attention. If he hadn't turned up by now, he'd certainly be in all the papers, if only because of his connection to his uncle.

  If he has engineered this, he'll likely materialize in a police station or hospital without coat or hat, and with some wild tale of abduction. By Chinese, of course— or perhaps by evil Hindu dacoits! The latter idea made her smother a cross between a snort and a chuckle. They will, of course, have lured him into their clutches with the promise of an Asian beauty—no, wait, that's not heroic enough. I know! He'll have seen the blackguards dragging some poor white girl away, meaning, no doubt, to sell her into White Slavery. It would have to be a beautiful and pure, honest serving girl—as if he'd pay such a scene a moment of his attention!—and he rushed to her rescue. They overpowered him, drugged him, and left him bound and gagged in some dank warehouse while they made off with the maiden! And of course, by the time he woke up and freed himself, they were gone without a trace. That would certainly be enough to make Parkening a nine-days' wonder in the newspapers—and to make life misery for the Chinese or Indian population of London until people forgot about his story.

  I hope he is in trouble of his own making, and hasn't the wit to make up a tale, she thought, sobered. I’ll have to speak to Gupta about this in the morning, just in case. The wretch is mean enough and vindictive enough to make up just such a fantasy so that he can revenge himself on me through my household, and the only doubt I have is whether he's intelligent enough to think of doing so.

  It occurred to her that if Parkening continued to plague her, it might not be a bad thing to gradually turn over most of her hospital work to O'Reilly. The Irishman was her full partner at the Fleet now and, thanks to her, a full surgeon as well. When the "ladies of leisure" returned from their holidays and the theaters opened in full force, she would have plenty of paying patients to occupy her time without taking on the additional work in the charity wards, and besides, less time spent at the hospital would mean more time for the Fleet. Granted, she wouldn't get as much practice in surgery . . . and that was definitely a drawback. But she was doing surgery in the clinic, after all. If one of the patients from the Fleet were to be sent to the hospital, O'Reilly could take him in charge—unless, of course, the patient specifically wanted Maya.

  But that would be running away.

  The admonition stopped her spinning thoughts for a moment. The suffragettes don't run away. They let themselves be jailed, they even go on hunger strikes knowing that they'll be force-fed and might even die of it.

  True, but sometimes it was a great deal wiser to run from a problem than to confront it. Parkening's behavior was not something she had any control over, and if he decided to enlarge his circle of potential victims to all those around her, wouldn't it be better just to take herself out of his purview and hope he would forget about her?

  So long as he did forget. Some people continued to pursue even when the object of pursuit was well out of reach.

  It seemed such a coward's portion. And when he stopped pursuing Maya, who could, after all. defend herself and had powerful friends like Lord Almsley, who would he choose to pursue next? With a man like Parkening, there would always be a "next" victim.

  I’ll worry about it after he resurfaces, she decided. With any luck at all, Parkening would be made much of, and the attention would distract him from making the lives of others miserable.

  And if I'm really, truly lucky, came the nasty little thought, just as she drifted off to sleep, something terrible has happened to him and I'll never have to worry about him again.

  She paid for that nasty little thought with dreams of being pursued through the fog by some nameless, faceless menace. She woke just after dawn with an aching head and a strong disinclination to go out until the sun had burned that fog away. It lay in thick swaths all around the block, and it seemed that Maya's reluctance was shared by everyone else in the neighborhood, for there was nothing stirring out on the streets.

  With the first touch of the rays of the sun, however, the stuff vanished like her dreams, and she packed up her bag as usual to see to her patients at the Fleet. A boy was selling papers on the corner, crying headlines that had something to do with politics in Europe. She bought one for the ride to the clinic. The omnibus was usually empty and she took full advantage of the fact to put her bag on the bench beside her and open the paper.

  The headlines on the front page might have been about Balkan unrest, but the first "screamer" inside struck her with the news that social lion Simon Parkening was still missing, and foul play was no longer suspected, but a certainty.

  Lord Alderscroft contemplated the saddle of mutton before him with gloom, while Peter Scott waited for the apology he already knew was forthcoming. Finally the peer raised his eyes and looked straight into Peter's face.

  "I asked you here for luncheon so that I could apologize to you, Scott," Alderscroft said manfully. "I've taken down the Great Shield; it's utterly useless, and the power wasted on it can be put to more productive efforts. You were right about this India business, and I was wrong. There were more deaths last night, and all the signs point to that missing man being mixed in with it somehow. He's probably dead, too," Alderscroft added glumly, as an afterthought.

  "If it's any consolation to you, I know something about the fellow, myself," Peter replied. "He is—or was—more than a bit of a rotter. I doubt he'll be mourned or missed by anyone but his own family, and possibly not even by them much."

  "Personal information, Scott?" Alderscroft looked at him keenly from under his shaggy brows. "From that little Hindu doctor of yours?"

  Peter coughed. "Well,
yes, actually. The man had a habit of making a nuisance of himself around her hospital."

  Alderscroft helped himself to mutton, chewed thoughtfully, then replied, "I don't suppose the doctor-gel could be mixed up in this. . . ." But then to Peter's relief, he shook his head, and answered his own question. "No, not likely. We know her, we've had our eyes on her, and not only has she no connection whatsoever to the men who were murdered— well, bar the rotter—but there's been nothing from her quarter but the shields and defenses and a trifling bit of healing magic."

  "I am a bit concerned that she might be a target of this—" he ventured. "My lord, I really do think we ought to invite her into the White Lodge, not only because she is becoming a formidable Earth Master, but for her protection. As long as she must function alone, she will be in danger, if not from this menace, than from others who will wish to gather her into their fold."

  Alderscroft's brows contracted together in a frown, and he stabbed at an inoffensive piece of mutton savagely. "A woman? And a foreigner to boot? Out of the question! East is East and West is West, my boy— we don't mix our magic with Eastern magic, that only brings trouble. Well, look at the messes that Blavatsky woman got herself into, and the Besant girl is no better nor saner!"