The Isle of Blood

“Considerably less,” the monstrumologist replied. He rose, grimacing. I heard his knees pop when he stood. Von Helrung still lingered near the door; Walker was leaning against the wall beside him, a handkerchief pressed against his mouth, his face the color of parchment paper. The sound of his gagging was very loud in the small room.

“We must summon the police,” he said ehind his makeshift mask. No one paid any attention.

Warthrop paced the room, moving in a widening circle around Torrance’s body, eyes roaming the blood-enriched floor, the blood-specked walls, the furniture, the windows and sills. At one point, about five feet from the corpse, he fell to his hands and knees and crawled along the floor, snuffing and sniffing like a hound hot on a scent.

“There were two of them,” he said at the completion of his inspection. “One very tall—well over six feet, right-handed, a cigar smoker, and redheaded. His companion is much shorter—five-six or -seven, in that range, and walks with a pronounced limp—one leg, his right, shorter than the other…”

Conan Doyle’s face was a study in scarlet. He was blushing like a young swain in the first heady throes of unrequited passion.

“Astounding. Completely astounding,” he said hoarsely.

“It’s elementary, Doyle,” returned the doctor. “A killer is like any artist. He cannot help but leave something of himself in his work. One only needs to know how to separate the work from the one who authored it.”

“What I mean to say is I am having the most extraordinary sensation…”

“So am I!” called Dr. Walker from across the room. “I am going to be sick!”

Conan Doyle continued, his eyes growing misty. “A man has been brutally murdered; it is terrible! And yet I find myself overwhelmed by an equally terrible sense of wonder.… Why, it’s as if I have stepped over some mystical threshold and into one of my own stories! And here, before me, the man himself, the same one I created, come to life. Behold the man!”

“Yes, it is similar to one of your stories, with the exception that it is not

one of your stories, and there is a very real possibility that you are in mortal danger,” replied the monstrumologist.

“Do you really think so?” Conan Doyle seemed practically giddy at the prospect.

“And not just you.” Warthrop turned to von Helrung. “We must leave this hotel immediately.”

Von Helrung nodded. “What about Jacob?”

The doctor smiled grimly. “He’ll be staying here.”

We grabbed our luggage and hurried downstairs. (The monstrumologist was pleased that I’d remembered to bring his instrument case. “I thought I would never see it again. Bless you, Will Henry, and damn that turncoat Arkwright!”) A line of hansoms sat waiting for customers along the curb outside. Before we enlisted any for our escape, however, I was dispatched to spy out the terrain while the men waited inside the lobby. The doctor did not need to tell me what to look for. I had already seen it inside Paddington Station—a shock of red hair and the disconcerting glow of dark, backlit eyes.

“Well?” Warthrop asked upon my breathless return.

“All clear, sir.”

He nodded briskly. “Two cabs—von Helrung, myself, and Will Henry in one. Doyle, Sir Hiram will go with you—”

“Would you please stop calling me that?” Walker asked. He was leaning against a column, still trying to collect himself. “It’s cruel and childish.” The British monstrumologist’s nickname, bestowed upon him by Warthrop, had originated several years before, at a party at which Walker had been smitten by a certain young woman with ties to the royal family. Trying to impress her, Walker had inadvisably passed himself off as a peer of the realm, and his fellow scientists were not about to let him forget it.

Warthrop ignored him. He said to Conan Doyle, “I suggest you take a circuitous route, and keep an eye open for our redheaded friend and his hairless compatriot. If they do spot us, I think we shall be the ones followed—but then again, they may split up. Pray you get the bald one!”

He seized Conan Doyle’s hand in both of his and gave it a quick, hard shake. “It has been my pleasure to see you again, sir. May our next meeting be in more congenial circumstances!”

“The pleasure has been entirely mine, Dr. Warthrop,” replied Conan Doyle earnestly. “Touie will not believe the story I have to tell her!”

“I would not divulge too much,” cautioned the doctor, his dark eyes twinkling. “She will think you’ve been drinking.”

“The feeling is not so different,” admitted the author. “I don’t know if you’re a spiritual man, but—”

“Not often,” said the monstrumologist, urging Conan Doyle toward the lobby doors. “Hardly ever. No—just once. I was three or four, and my mother caught me deep in a conversation with God.” He shrugged. “I have no memory of it. God might.”

Five minutes later we were inside a hansom cab, on our way to Hyde Park. “Why Hyde Park?” von Helrung wanted to know.

The doctor shrugged. “Why not?”