Conan Doyle hurried through the crowded train station, banging shoulders and muttering excuse-mes and dreadfully sorrys as he jostled through teeming shoals of rail passengers. Finally breaking free of the crowds, he sprinted across the echoing transepts, coattails flying, one hand clamping the gray homburg to his head. Puffing wind, he raced up Platform 2 where a train stood waiting on either side, hissing steam.
He spotted Jean Leckie as she gathered her skirts and stepped down from the carriage. She did not see him immediately, and for a magical moment she looked about herself, unaware she was being observed. She was wearing the same hat and the same violet dress as the previous evening. She stepped to the middle of the platform and paused to smooth her crinolines. It was a delightfully unguarded moment and his heart cartwheeled at the sight. A notion struck him, and he quickened his pace — he would touch a hand to her arm to surprise her. It would not be unseemly. Waterloo Station was a vast, echoing vault of arching steel and glass clangorous with the chuff and hiss of arriving and departing railway stock, the yawps of porters, and the loud-hailer announcements of trains. It was a place a called-out name could not be heard. He had an entirely appropriate excuse for a touch.
A railway engine with a single carriage had drawn up one side of the platform. A porter straining at a luggage cart piled to overflowing trundled toward him. A large ginger man in a black bowler idled on a bench, twirling a pocket watch by its chain. Close by, another large man in a long coat and a matching black bowler hunkered behind his newspaper.
As Conan Doyle sidestepped the luggage cart, Miss Leckie began to turn his way. She would see him at any moment. He had lost the element of surprise. He began to raise his hat, a smile beaming on his face. And then she turned to face him full on, her eyes met his, and he stumbled to a halt.
It was not Jean Leckie. The young woman was a total stranger.
At that moment a train whistle shrieked and the parked railway engine jetted a swirling cloud of steam across the platform. As it engulfed him, Waterloo Station vanished. Suddenly, a powerful hand gripped his right arm. Another gripped his left. To his shock and surprise, Arthur Conan Doyle, a large, athletic man, was lifted off his feet and whisked sideways across the platform, the toes of his shoes scuffing the concrete. The side of a railway carriage appeared. A door opened and he was hurled inside and bounced into a seat with the bowler-hatted bullies dropping heavily on either side of him.
“What the devil! What is the meaning? Who are you people?”
Perched on the seat opposite was a small man with a head the shape of a blown-glass bulb. He was entirely bald on top, apart from a single pomaded forelock, which curled upon his brow like a question mark.
The carriage jerked as the railway engine began to move, accelerating out of the station, iron wheels squealing for traction on the rails. It traveled several hundred feet before an unseen railway switch was thrown and the train swerved off the main track and plunged into the black maw of a tunnel. Out the carriage windows, the perpetual night of the Underground network hurtled darkly past.
“Who—?”
“You may call me Cypher,” the little man interrupted before Conan Doyle could spit out his question.
“Cypher?” Conan Doyle grunted. “You must have had very imaginative parents.”
The diminutive figure smiled indulgently. “Not my real name, obviously. And given your intellect, Doctor Doyle, you have probably already surmised that you have been duped for a reason. I know that you and your friend Oscar Wilde were present at the scene of Lord Howell’s assassination last night.”
Conan Doyle shifted in his seat. Was the man trying to somehow entrap him into confessing something?
“I was there at the request of the Yard. Despite that fact, my friend and I were warned in no uncertain terms by the commissioner of police himself to have no further involvement in the case. The fact that you have snatched me, tells me you are not the police. Then who, indeed, are you?”
Conan Doyle eyed the little man up and down. He was short: under five feet, so that the tips of his polished shoes swung free of the carriage floor, like a child’s. However, the finely made suit, immaculately tailored down to the last stitch, and the fastidiousness of his dress, complete with boutonniere and round, gold-rimmed spectacles that sparkled in the electric carriage light, suggested a man of power and influence.
“Someone from the government, I presume. A spy master?”
“Not a bad guess, as I would expect from the author of Sherlock Holmes. I confess, I am an enthusiast of your clever fictions but that does not appertain to this—”
“Kidnapping?” Conan Doyle interrupted.
“Summons,” the man who called himself Cypher corrected. “I represent a higher authority. One greater than the government, comprised as it is of grubby politicians who are merely temporary holders of office.”
“Who, then, God?” Conan Doyle challenged, his sense of outrage recovering after the shock of being shanghaied in the middle of Waterloo Station.
Cypher’s small face attempted to mold itself into something approaching a smile; he flashed a collection of tiny, peg-like teeth, aiming at geniality, but managing instead to convey the menacing look of a playground Napoleon.
“God and country,” he answered cryptically. “As you shall soon see.”
The brakes squealed on. The train shuddered as it decelerated and drew up at an Underground station, where it trembled like a whippet straining at its lead, anxious to be released. By the sparkle of electric lamps, Conan Doyle read the name spelled out on the porcelain tiles: ORPHEUS STREET STATION.
The ginger behemoth flung open the door and stepped out, holding the door. Cypher slid from the bench onto his feet. “Come along, Doctor Doyle. And no heroics, please. I do not wish for an unfortunate accident.”
Conan Doyle had been planning a dozen such scenarios in his head. His hands were balled into fists, and he had already decided he would punch the larger of the two thugs first; but at Cypher’s words, his fists unclenched. They stepped out onto the deserted platform. He casually eyed the steps leading up into the station, wondering whether to run for it, but up close he saw to his surprise that the steps ascended a mere five feet before abutting a wall. The remainder of the staircase was a painting, like cheap scenery from a theatrical production. And then he realized the stunning implication: the entire station was a ruse.
Cypher caught the bafflement on Conan Doyle’s face and smiled. “Quite right, Doctor Doyle, there is no Orpheus Street in London and no station. A personal joke of mine.” He stepped to the wall and depressed a blank white tile in the middle of the O in Orpheus. It sank beneath his gloved fingers. A sound followed — the clunk of a mechanism releasing — and then a section of wall cracked open and swung inward: a secret door leading to a lighted tunnel. At the end, a staircase.
Cypher sent the ginger mauler ahead and fixed Conan Doyle with an unequivocal look. “If you would follow, please.”
At the end of the tunnel they reached a wrought-iron staircase and rang the metal steps with their feet as they climbed two stories to a stout wooden door reinforced with metal straps and heavy iron rivets. It looked like the door to a castle, so Conan Doyle was surprised when it opened and they stepped into a sumptuous room with wallpapered walls, and high ceilings with chandeliers and elaborate plaster cornices.