Cypher nodded for his hulking minotaurs to take a seat on a fussy floral sofa and eyed Conan Doyle coldly. “Everything you have seen and everything you are about to see or hear is a state secret. You will say nothing of this to a living soul. Do you understand?”
The fineness of the room and the cryptic warning kicked over the hornet’s nest of speculation in Conan Doyle’s mind and set it abuzz. He was finally beginning to suspect where he was. “Y-yes, of course,” he stammered.
Cypher flayed him with a final, scorching look. “You would do well to remember that.” He stepped to a second door and Conan Doyle followed. The interior door was painted gleaming white with elaborate gilt door handles. Cypher rapped at it with his tiny knuckles and bewigged servants in royal-blue satin uniforms and knee breeches immediately swept the door open.
“Leave your coat and hat,” Cypher commanded. A servant stepped behind Conan Doyle and slipped the wool overcoat from his broad shoulders while the other took his hat and gloves.
“Follow me closely.”
Conan Doyle shadowed Cypher along a long plush-carpeted corridor. His attention was drawn by the many fine paintings in enormous gilt frames that hung on either side. Most were portraits of English kings and queens stretching back centuries. He longed to stop and study them, but the little man was setting a cracking pace and he hurried to keep up. Abruptly, they turned sharp right into a large room with vaulted ceilings bedecked with plaster frieze works. Dazzled by the opulence of scarlet walls and glittering gilt, his eyes roved wildly, until his focus was drawn, by deliberate intent of the architect, to the far end of the room. Beneath a proscenium arch, a dais of three steps ascended to a throne. Seated upon the throne, still wearing her familiar dress of mourning black and white lace headdress, was a figure whose face was struck into every coin of the realm.
Victoria Regina.
Pike-wielding beefeaters hovered in every corner of the room, while red-tunicked soldiers of the queen’s life guard stood at attention on either side of the throne, cutlasses drawn and held ready. Cypher stopped fifteen feet shy of the throne, bowed his head, and uttered in a reverential voice, “Majesty.”
Conan Doyle echoed the salutation and by pure reflex fell to one knee and bowed deeply.
“Your zeal is noted, Doctor Doyle,” Victoria answered in a quavering, old ladie’s voice, “but men have not bowed from the knee since Elizabeth’s time.”
Feeling foolish, Conan Doyle rose and bowed again, this time from the waist. When he finally summoned the courage to stand tall and raise his head, he was shocked by Victoria’s appearance. It had been ten years since the death of Prince Albert. In deep mourning, Victoria had withdrawn from public life and soon became a mystery to her own subjects. People whispered that she had secretly died and that the news was being suppressed to delay the succession of her dissolute son, Edward, Prince of Wales. Other scuttlebutt was far more vicious — the aging queen was stricken with disease: consumption, heart failure, even syphilis (contracted from Albert).
As a trained physician, Conan Doyle could not fail to notice the ailing condition of the seventy-eight-year-old monarch. She had lost weight, he could tell from previously taken photographs, but she retained the pudding-in-a-sock physique. She slumped upon the throne. Her face was waxy and pallid. Her glassy brown eyes protruded like a spaniel’s. Her chest rose and fell unevenly — he could hear the leather-bellows wheeze of her respiration. And when she spoke, Victoria’s voice was faltering and distant, as though it had traveled a wearisome journey from her lips to his ears. In point of fact, she was barely audible.
“Doctor Doyle, your Sherlock Holmes stories have been a great source of diversion to us during our retreat from the world.” She raised a hand in a series of palsied jerks and let it drop heavily in her lap. “Now it is our hope that a mind as ingenious as yours might be employed to save your queen, your country, and the great Empire we represent.”
“Indeed, your highness, it is an honor to be asked,” Conan Doyle answered, and bowed again, quite unnecessarily.
“The queen’s representative, Mister Cypher, will describe in detail the task you are asked to perform. But we wanted to meet you personally, so that you do not labor under any suspicion of this being the highest possible service you could render to the nation.”
Throughout her speech, Conan Doyle leaned forward, straining to hear. He threw a worried frown at Cypher. “Her Majesty’s voice is very faint,” he whispered out the side of his mouth. “Might I approach the throne?”
“You may, but at the risk of being skewered on a pike staff,” Cypher replied beneath his breath.
“But I am not quite certain what is being asked of me,” Conan Doyle whispered to Cypher. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Simply say ‘yes’ and bow,” Cypher replied. “Your acquiescence to a royal request is a foregone conclusion. Say ‘yes,’ bow to Her Majesty, and then we shall back away before we turn and leave the royal presence.”
“Do you know what the French term, coup d’état means, Doctor Doyle?”
They were back on the private underground train, the bowler-hatted bruisers squeezed tight on either side of the Scottish author. This time the train was rumbling in the reverse direction, toward Waterloo Station.
“A coup d’état? Yes, I believe so. It is a kind of palace revolution, is it not?”
Cypher’s face soured, as if the words left a vile taste upon his tongue. “You have no doubt read in the newspapers of the assassination attempts made upon Her Majesty?”
“Of course.”
“There have been eight ‘official’ attempts. All were the handiwork of lunatics or disaffected outcasts from society. They were not ruthlessly planned, but rather the slapdash bumblings of delusional cretins discharging pistols at the royal carriage and such — more public nuisance than serious assassination attempt. However, there have been four attempts that you have not read about — because I forbade the newspapers from publishing them.” Cypher’s demeanor grew grim. “And because those four attempts were very nearly successful. By contrast these outrages were masterminded by organized groups: Fenians, anarchists, and in two cases by agents we believe are homegrown.”
“What do you mean by homegrown?”
“Britain is one of the few European countries never to have suffered a revolution. But now I fear there is a threat to the monarchy from within. Of late there have been a number of carefully targeted assassinations. Lord Howell was the fourth victim.” Cypher saw the question poised on Conan Doyle’s lips and preempted it. “Yes, the other three were officially described as accidents. We believe some shadowy group is planning the equivalent of a palace coup. As a smoke screen, they are stirring up agitators — anarchists, Fenians — to commit random acts of terror. Meanwhile key members of the government and aristocracy are being eliminated. I fear these actions will culminate in a palace coup where Victoria will be murdered and a new government will sweep to power, most likely under the pretense of protecting a nation about to descend into chaos.”
“But what of the Prince of Wales? If the queen were to be murdered, would he not accede to the throne?”
At mention of the heir presumptive, Cypher’s mouth puckered in a moue of disgust. “There are those who would seek to delay the Prince of Wales’ accession for as long as possible. I am one of them. Albert Edward is a frivolous gallivanter who does not possess the temperament required of a monarch. Still, as you say, he is the rightful heir to the throne. And so, as an insurance policy, I have dispatched him on a diplomatic mission to Europe. He should be in Prague about now.”