"Or been driven there."
Sparks stared grimly up at the wall's vast reach. Two sharp blasts from a cabbie's whistle pulled their attention away to the right.
"Barry," said Sparks, taking off at a sprint, shouting back over his shoulder at his less agile companion. "Come along, Doyle, don't dawdle."
Doyle ran after him, rounded the corner, and turned left, Barry waved to them, standing beside the brougham, a quarter-mile away, half the visible length of the wall. Doyle labored to keep pace with Sparks and was completely breathless by the time he reached them.
Barry had summoned them to a rough passage hacked through the barrier, a head taller than a man and twice as wide. Wood chips covered the ground, mostly outside the entrance. A weathered ax lay on the ground nearby. Gazing through the opening, they could see stables and the house beyond. There was no sight or sound of activity inside.
"Complete your survey of the wall, please, Barry," ordered Sparks. "I predict we'll find this provides us with our only access."
Barry jumped aboard the cab and headed off down the wall.
"Someone was cutting their way in, not out," said Doyle, examining the edge of the gap.
"And after its completion."
Doyle nodded in agreement. "Who cut through. Friend or enemy?"
"Keeping something out favors the latter, doesn't it?"
Nothing stirred within, but they stayed where they were, as if some invisible obstruction as solid as the logs remained between them and the grounds of Topping Manor, until Barry returned from his survey to confirm that this portal was indeed the only entrance.
"Shall we have a look, then?" Sparks said casually.
"After you, Jack," said Doyle.
Sparks instructed Barry to remain with the horses, slid his rapier from his walking stick, and ventured through the hollow. Doyle drew his revolver and joined him. They began by patrolling the wall's interior perimeter, hugging the redoubt as they worked their way around. It was evident that most of the wall's labor had been completed from inside. Ladders and stacks of unused logs were abundant. Bales of hay and other binding materials lay near pits packed with congealed clay. The wall ran a consistent fifty yards from the front of the building proper, but in the rear, where the architecture of the manor was more irregular, the wall moved considerably closer, in spots no more than ten feet away.
The grounds, once clearly immaculate and groomed, were a ruin. Hedges crushed, statuary toppled, grass trampled and slashed. One stretch of wall barreled through the remains of a topiary garden; odd bits of the animals' spiny bodies extruded from the base as if severed by a train. A child's playground had been equally mangled, smashed toys scattered about. A weathered hobbyhorse lay where it had fallen in a pile of sand, its painted exertions a parody of rictus.
Ground-floor windows had been barricaded from inside the house, curtains drawn around planks, tables, unhinged doors that had been randomly employed. Some windows were bro-
ken, glass fallen to the inside. Every door they tried was locked and immovable.
"Let's try the stables," said Sparks.
They crossed to and entered the freestanding stable on the far side of the graveled drive. No like effort had been made to secure it; the door stood open. Saddles and gear lined the shelves and pegs of the tack room. The grooms' quarters were neat and tidy: beds made, personal effects filling the drawers and bed stands. A half-eaten kidney pie sat on a plate on the table in the common room, beside it a teapot and cup of cold tea. The orderliness of the place in the shadow of such monstrous chaos felt deeply unsettling. Sparks eased open a creaking door that led directly to the stables proper. The barn appeared empty.
"Listen, Doyle," Sparks said quietly. "What do you hear?"
After a moment. "Nothing."
Sparks nodded. "In a stable."
"No flies," said Doyle, realizing what was missing.
"Nor birds outside, either."
They moved down the center, opening the stall doors one after the other. All were empty, but in some the ripe memory of horses lingered.
"They set most of them free early on," said Sparks.
"Must've used some to pull in the wood, don't you think?"
"The drays, yes. They let them go once they had the logs they needed. But there have been horses boarded in at least three of these stalls since the wall was finished."
The last door wouldn't budge. Sparks silently indicated his intentions. Doyle nodded, took the rapier from him, and raised his pistol. Sparks took two steps back, whirled, and kicked the door full force. It flew open with a loud crack. Inside the stall a body lay on its stomach in the straw, its left leg jutting out from the knee at an impossible angle.
"Easy, Doyle, he's well past causing us harm."
"Must've had his foot against the door," said Doyle, lowering the gun.
They stepped cautiously in toward the body. It wore high boots, breeches, a shirt and waistcoat, the working costume of a footman.
"What's this then?" asked Sparks, pointing to the floor.
Straw throughout the stall was clotted with thick trails of a
dried, murky secretion: shiny, almost phosphorescent, laid down in a rambling, crazy-quilt pattern. From the body, the trails separated and led up and over the walls. It emitted no odor, but something about the silvery hue and oleaginous composition of the substance prompted one's gorge to tumble.
"No smell from the body, either," said Doyle. "It hasn't decomposed."
Sparks looked at him with comprehending curiosity. They knelt beside the corpse. Its clothes shone, polished and glossy, coated with the same strange residue. They put their hands under it and turned the body over; it was shockingly weightless, almost entirely devoid of mass, and then they saw why: The face was mummified, only the barest netting of flesh covering the bones. The eye sockets were empty, shrunken, the hands as delicately skeletal as a dried flower buried in the pages of a family Bible.
"Ever seen the like?" asked Sparks.
"Not in a body that's been dead less than twenty years," Doyle replied, examining it more closely. "As if it's been preserved. Mummified."
"Had the life sucked right from his bones."
Sparks squeezed one of its clutched fists in his hand; it collapsed into a thousand dusty fragments, like a broken filigree of frozen lace.
"What could have done this?" Doyle said quietly.
A form moved behind them outside the stall.
"What is it, Barry?" Sparks said, without turning around.
"Some'fin' you ought have a look at out here."
They left the stall and followed Barry outside. He pointed to the rooftop of the manor. A thin ribbon of smoke issued from the tallest chimney.
"Started 'bout five minutes ago," Barry said.
"Someone's alive in there," said Doyle.
"Good. Let's ring the bell and announce ourselves."
"Do you think that's wise, Jack?"
"We've come all this way. Don't want to disappoint our host."
"But we don't know who's in there, do we?"
"Only one way to find out," answered Sparks, striding purposefully toward the house.
"But the doors and windows are all obstructed." "That won't prove much of an obstacle to Barry." Sparks snapped his fingers. With a tip of the hat, Barry ran ahead and without skipping a beat leapt onto the front of the house, grabbed purchase for hand and foot in the margins between bricks, and scampered up to the second floor with the ease of a spider on a web. Pulling a jemmy stick from his coat, within seconds he persuaded a window to yield, pushed it open, and poured himself through to the interior.
Doyle was fraught with anxiety at what horror might be lying in wait for the little man. Sparks calmly pulled a cheroot from his jacket, struck a match with his thumbnail, and lit the smoke, all the while keeping a cool eye on the entrance. "Just be a moment now," Sparks said. They heard movement on the other side of the door, the ragged scratch of heavy weight being dragged across a tiled floor, then a lock disengaging. A moment later, Barry opened the front door, and they entered Topping.