It wasn't the dingy, stale air of the laboratory that (of all places) reminded Tom of an under-funded, worn out zoo. It wasn't the way something was growing on the microscope slides that probably hadn't ever been intended for study under a microscope. It wasn't even the clusters of cages that had once held animals, and were now conspicuously absent despite the piles and piles of food in the shed outside. He couldn't actually put his finger on it, but there was something downright unnatural about the whole collection of buildings.
"Just a moment!"
And there was something even more unnatural about the bumbling, cheerful old man in the laboratory coat and inch-thick glasses who was now shuffling towards them.
"Ah... you'll be the men the government sent to collect me." He rubbed his hands together in an action that reminded Tom of a fly more than anything human. "Agent Sawyer, Agent Finn..." Both nodded. "Captain... Nemo, is it?" He peered at the Indian pirate through the glasses as though he thought he might see something through them that no one else had yet. The pirate shifted uncomfortably, already disliking the man. "Interesting. Interesting...."
He cleared his throat and continued to look them over. "Dr. Jekyll, yes, I have read about your strange case... Mr. Gray, I don't believe I've had the pleasure. Inspector Pitt, Inspector Abberline... So Scotland Yard has an interest in this case as well? How curious..." Sebastian had been locked in his quarters and Tellman had been left on the ship, as no one had been sure how either would react. "And..." he stared at the floating trenchcoat and hat. Skinner, in a fit of pique, had flatly refused to wear any whiteface and had to be persuaded to wear clothing at all. Tom couldn't really say that it wouldn't have been handy to have an invisible spy running around making sure the doctor was who he said he was, but he'd been outvoted.
"Your vision's fine..." Skinner said wearily.
"Mr. Skinner. How ... interesting. I'd head of Griffin's formula, naturally... but I had also heard it had died with him."
"Let's just say that that circumstances of his death were ... changed... and leave it at that, shall we?"
Jekyll shifted his stance uncomfortably, hoping no one had noticed.
Dr. Moreau stared at Skinner for a little while longer, then finally shrugged. "As you like... As you like."
Tom choked. Dust flew, and everyone turned to look at him. He pulled his hand back from the shelf where he had been poking around through the papers, but not before Huck swatted him gently upside the head. "Sorry..."
"Quite all right, Agent Sawyer... Quite all right." Dr. Moreau tittered, a strange noise that sounded more and more like madness to Tom. "I doubt you would be able to understand the notes at any rate... unless you have a more keenly scientific mind than I think you have...? No? Yes, of course... you are the investigators of crime, and I am the investigator of science..."
Now just about everyone in the League was fidgeting uncomfortably, worried or startled by the man, with two exceptions. Nemo was entirely unflappable and Abberline, apparently, had been inured to madness by his long association with the strange Sebastian Kane.
"And as investigators of crime, sir, we've come to ask you to donate your time and scientific expertise to the ongoing investigation of international... child kidnappers." Huck, no less intimidated by the giggling scientist than Tom, nevertheless managed to get out a polite invitation.
"Oh? And why would a biologist specializing in animal research..." It came out with every syllable enunciated, a-ni-mal re-search. "Be of use to you in your investigation of kidnappers. Are they using dogs? Or... there was a case recently in the Strand involving a mix up between a child and a monkey..."
Huck looked helplessly at Jekyll, their resident man of science.Tom just shrugged.
"There are certain... indicators in tissue samples left by the kidnappers that they are... not entirely human." Henry temporized.
Dr. Moreau's face darkened so rapidly and so far that Tom, Huck, and Jekyll all stepped back several paces, nearly behind the other four. Old as he was (and, from what Tom had read in his file, he had to be ancient), he looked capable of as much fury and destruction as Hyde, in a package as inoffensive as Jekyll.
"So you came to me, thinking that I had something to do with this? You want to see my creations, do you? Interrogate my children? Well, let me tell you something, my good friends... you may think you know what it is that I do here, but you know nothing of what it is that I am creating! I have seen the beast in my microscope, and I have chained him. I have taken the devil out of the beast, and replaced it with the angel in the man. I have surpassed God's directive to be master over the animals and made them masters of themselves. And I have taught my children better than to be the sorts of base, vile creatures that man has since become!"
By the end of the speech the doctor had flecks of spittle flying from his mouth, his eyes wide and bulging. Jekyll looked as though he might faint if Skinner hadn't been directly behind him, prepared to catch him if he keeled over. Tom and Huck were both standing on the balls of their feet, hands at the butt ends of their guns.
To their surprise it was Abberline who stepped forward and slapped the doctor smartly across the face. "Control yourself, man," he snapped. "If we thought it was your creations that had been carrying out these kidnappings we would already have arrested you. It's your mind we need, not your animals." He wiped his hand off on a kerchief and looked the doctor up and down, disdainful. "Although if you've descended so far into senility perhaps our trip has been wasted."
Tom gaped.
The doctor blinked. His eyes seemed to clear, and he shrank back into himself. "Sorry... sorry. My apologies. I thought..." he shuffled backwards, heading out the door. "Never mind. I'm sorry."
"Sir..." Tom reached out to touch the man's shoulder, and Moreau shrank away again. "We think your expertise might help us identify who or what is kidnapping these children. That's why we're here... not to persecute you in any way."
"We'd like your assistance on the case," Pitt stepped forward, speaking gently and calmly. "Quite frankly, this is far beyond our normal beat. We're investigators, keepers of the peace. We're not scientists, biologists or chemists. We couldn't tell if the samples we took from the kidnapping sites are human or semi-human, our forensics teams at Scotland Yard and Special Branch aren't up to that sort of detection. And we have only a single scientist working on the case right now. We'd like a dozen, at least. Specialists in the field... the sorts of people who would know the right questions to ask." He approached the doctor slowly, hands out, trying not to make any threatening gestures.
"I see..." the doctor said slowly. "Yes. Yes, I think I see. And of course you must have the best, the fastest, eh? To be able to save your children in time, you must find out all you can... yes. I see where you are going." Now that his morality and the integrity of his so-called children were not being called into question he had returned to the almost bumbling friendliness of earlier. The transformation was so abrupt it was frightening. "Very well... very well, then. Who am I to stand in the way of justice and, of course, the safety of a number of children."
"Hundreds of children, sir." Pitt's face was grave, but it was clear that he was still pleading to the scientist's ego and what perhaps remained of his better nature. "This epidemic of kidnapping is world-wide, and it appears to have escalated only within the last few months."
"I see... yes, I do see." The doctor straightened. "Very well! I will pack... I suppose we had better leave at once, if we are to arrive in..."
"London." Tom supplied shortly, leaving it up to Nemo whether or not to disclose any information about his craft.
"London? Yes, yes of course, we had better leave immediately. Shoo!" Dr. Moreau made abrupt flapping motions that had at least half of the League scurrying suddenly to get out of his way, as though madness or senility was contagious. "Shoo! Out! I must pack. Return in... one hour! Yes, an hour, that will be sufficient time."
They filed out slowly, still looking at each other as though wondering if this was as good an idea as it had seemed a week ago. Tom and Huck, the last to leave, could still hear the doctor muttering to himself as he gathered things together on the desk.
"Are you sure he's actually going to be useful?" Huck murmured.
"It's not his usefulness that worries me... I've heard stories of Skinner's predecessor." Tom sighed, glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were really out of earshot before he said what was on his mind. "It's his defensiveness about his so-called children. Yeah, they probably didn't kidnap anyone... but what ... what's he been doing out there that he thinks we might think that?"
Huck blinked. "Don't follow."
"Think about it... he was defensive, really angry about us coming here and accusing him of kidnapping children. But he didn't sound surprised... he didn't sound as though it was unexpected that someone in the government might come here to shut him down, or worse. He actually sounded as though he'd expected that his children might get out and start doing... I don't know. Really terrible things."
Huck stopped in his tracks and stared at his friends, then turned and looked a little ways down the hill at the small house surrounded by barns, silos, buildings. He looked around at the fences and the empty and half-empty bags of food. He looked back over at Tom, who shrugged.
"Welcome to the League," he murmured wryly, and trotted off to follow the group.
Huck stared at the house a little while longer before he turned and walked away.
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Sebastian Kane paced up and down the corridors of the suite that he and Inspector Abberline unwillingly shared, tapping his walking stick in anger and frustration. Bad enough that he'd been kept prisoner for the past eighteen years. Worse still that his abilities, his skills had been hampered by the bastards Abberline had hired. The damned witches were keeping him locked up, a prisoner inside his own body. He had no idea where the bastard had gotten them. The only other magician of any sort in all of England that he could think of was Crowley, and that lad was barely out of his childhood phase of self-indulgence and pleasure...
His face contorted into a hideous scowl at the thought. Magicians of that sort were the worst kind, giving a bad name to the whole breed.
Commotion in the corridors... the others were back with their pet scientists. Those on the American continent, anyway; from what Sebastian had overheard in conversations they had at least two more stops to go before they returned to England, and a substantial amount of land travel to do as well. Of course, he would not be allowed off the ship. No one trusted him further than they could see him. Furious, Sebastian tried the doorknob again, prepared to jerk it off the door if he had to.
The door came open directly, nearly braining him in the center of his forehead.
He frowned suspiciously at it, then looked up. The well-dressed, young-looking chap with an aura about him that was so black he could barely be seen through it was leaning against the wall a little down the corridor, smirking.
"The others are all up in the war room, discussing their next port of call. I thought you might like to stretch your legs."
Sebastian's eyebrows arched upwards. "Out of the goodness of your heart? Please, Mr. Gray, I'm not so far gone as to believe that."
Dorian shrugged. "Out of my perverse sense of whimsy, then. Or perhaps a shared sentiment that the others are a bit too high-handed with their morals?" He turned and started down the corridor, seemingly indifferent to Sebastian's further actions. After a moment the older-looking gentleman followed him.
"I have heard rumors, but no one has actually related the story to me... what did you do to be regarded with such suspicion?"
Dorian tilted his head at the other man, wryly amused that he of all people would be asking that particular question. "You really want to know?"
Sebastian shrugged slightly. "Call it my own perverse sense of whimsy."
"I betrayed the rest of the League for my own personal gain and well-being. I collected them all for a megalomaniacal madman and then attempted to blow them up after making my escape." He related the incident in those two brief sentences with the exaggeratedly bored tone of someone for whom the incident still held memories of suffering. "What hideous crime did you commit to be shackled to that old bastard?"
"I killed several people to complete a magickal ritual to extend my life. Besides, they were whores. Women of loose morals and no importance, a symptom of the decay of society. I did the city a service and sent a much-needed message, written in letters of blood so that they would not fail to see."
Dorian made a slight snickering noise. "Unfortunately I believe they did... London is no less steeped in its own juices than it was ..." he narrowed his eyes at the other man. "In 1888."
"Yes, well. I was interrupted." Sebastian scowled again, fierce enough to make even Dorian step back and consider that maybe there was a reason the madman had been locked up in his rooms.
"So that was you."
"Yes."
Dorian stopped in the hallway; out of politeness, Sebastian stopped and waited for him. The immortal looked the magician up and down, evaluating him on some scale that Sebastian couldn't quite discern... and, to be honest about it, didn't really care to either. He simply folded his hands along the pommel of his stick and waited for the other man to finish his evaluation.
"Magic, you said?"
They resumed the walk. "Magick," Sebastian corrected his pronunciation. "Alchemy, astrology... the rituals and practices that allow us to see and control forces outside of normal human abilities."
Dorian shook his head. "I'm afraid you must be mad," he said, prepared to explain why he didn't believe the other man. Sebastian, however, only laughed.
"You, a veritable Immortal, are telling me that you do not believe I have a practical knowledge of magick?"
Dorian shut up.
"There are strange forces at work, and they are all around you. The average, ordinary man or woman does not see them, does not believe in them, lives his or her life trapped in the existance of an utterly banal mind. For those of us certain few who, either though a family lineage or through fortuitous associations, have learned that there is more to the world than we can simply see or hear... we study how to manipulate it, how to turn the rules and laws of magick to our own ends."
Dorian glanced over at the lecturing man who accentuated every point with a tap of his walking stick. Immortal he may have been, but this Sebastian was making him thoroughly uncomfortable with his obsessions and his strange ideas. The thought that he was having such a ludicrous conversation with the murderer of the East End did not help, although there had been rumors of strange events and rituals ever since Crowley had popped up with his ridiculous proclamations. And speaking of whom...
"So you are a follower of that Crowley fellow..." he ventured.
"That ignorant son of a motherless goat couldn't find his own arse in the dark with both hands and a compass," Sebastian snarled, back in the towering fury in which Dorian had found him. "He's a drugged and drunk pretender, a man who parades his addictions about as the means to a divine end."
"You don't feel strongly about this at all, do you," Dorian murmured to himself. Fortunately the madman didn't seem to hear.
"I follow a different path. A path of more... brutal efficiency than his path of corruption and degeneration. A more nobler path than his self-indulgence and his weak-minded decay of the flesh and the soul..."
Sebastian waxed eloquent on that subject for the next fifteen minutes. It didn't seem to occur to him that there was any sort of a world outside of his own narrow view, extreme at both ends, with no middle ground. Dorian tried not to look too bored, actually rather afraid for... well, not for his life. But if Sebastian really was a magician... and he had to be, or else why would he be on this ridiculous trip in the first place... Dorian was sure the man could find all sorts of hideous fates and punishments for him that didn't involve dying.
Besides, he was very sure that the madman would not approve of his former lifestyle in the slightest. No matter how much it might have been curbed since then by returning to take up with the League.
Suddenly, and with a pang that was startling in its ferocity, Dorian missed Mina. He missed her biting sarcasm, her fierce mind... her intelligence and wisdom that was untainted by any form of psychological disorder or inner tragedy. Not that she herself was perfectly ordinary... but of all of them she had been the only one he could ever talk to without wanting to escape the room five minutes later. Their relationship had been a failure, true... not that it had ever been a proper relationship in the first place. But he had few enough friends left, fewer who truly knew who and what he was. And she was one of those rare few.
And he had tried to destroy her.
Annoyed with himself, Dorian slipped down a side passage and was gone with Sebastian in mid rant. The mad magician stared after him, trailing off into silence when he thought the immortal could no longer hear, eyes narrowed and thoughtful. Perhaps there was more to him than just the pitch-black aura with the consistency of tar. He had shown some real potential there, towards the end, when Sebastian had started running out of synonyms and energy, and Dorian had run out of patience.
To be sure, the emotions behind the tirade had been genuine. Sebastian's lip still curled at the thought of the hideous waste of human life that made up the better part of the world. But, with his first experiment in public awareness turning into a dismal failure, he had opted to bide his time. His experiments had not, as Abberline thought, been a complete failure. He now had time to wait and see, time to outlast and outlive the annoying police inspector, and perhaps even the witches that worked for him. He did not, as the young Mr. Gray seemed to, have forever. But then, he didn't really need forever, and he enjoyed the sense of vulnerability, of humility, of his own frailty that remaining mortal gave him.
Perhaps in exchange for the return of his own mortality, Dorian Gray could be persuaded to help him, if only to achieve a certain measure of freedom for them both.
Sebastian smirked and made his way carefully back down the corridor, lest someone see him and report it to the Inspector. He didn't want his already dubious freedoms curtailed any further than they already were.
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"Are you absolutely certain?"
Nemo never would have thought it came down to this. That Dorian Gray, the man who had conspired to destroy his Nautilus with all his men and the League aboard, should warn him about a threat to the safety of the crew and passengers... it was unthinkable. And yet here they were, not an hour from the docks of Paris, heads together as they walked and discussed the possibility that a notorious serial killer was on board.
"Well, no, he didn't exactly come out and say it in so many words. But it all fits... the Inspector's presence, the things he's said... his manner, the way he looks at..." Dorian shook his head. "Put it this way, Nemo, do you really want to take a chance? The man is obviously a lunatic."
Nemo sighed. This was the absolute limit. It wasn't enough that he had a contingent of mad scientists aboard... not one, oh no. The first, Dr. Moreau, had not been the last of the babbling buggers to board his ship. Every doctor on the lists of the various government employees seemed to have something amiss in his brain. And now perhaps one of their own was equally disturbed, and homicidal to boot. No wonder Henry had retired.
"Well, I'll keep an eye on him," Nemo said more loudly for the benefit of the others, ending the discussion before his headache could grow any worse. "Now, who was this man you said you thought we had missed?"
Dorian shrugged. "The man's name is Philby, but it's not him we're after. Back when I was at university he started a rumor about a madman who claimed to have invented a device to travel through time."
Nemo, Jekyll, and Pitt stopped in their tracks. Tom and Huck had to back-track to rejoin them. "A physicist," Henry said, frowning. "Dorian, what use is a physicist going to be? We're not dealing with some perversion of the laws of gravity."
"Perfect," Pitt muttered, his temper fraying at the edges from having to deal with Tellman, Abberline, and all the strangeness of the Nautilus passengers. "Another insane scientist."
"It's not the machine itself that I thought about," Dorian said with the patience and superiority of someone concealing the best for last. "It's the adventures Philby said the man had when he was... well, out of time."
They resumed walking, slowly, more because Dorian had started towards the Rue de Peletier than out of any real desire to meet this man. "So all you have is the word of a man who may or may not have heard his ... teacher, I presume? Who may or may not be in his right mind." Nemo sighed. "Dorian, if this is another trick."
Dorian rolled his eyes.
"I think I heard of that story..." Henry frowned. "It was just being passed around at the university a year or two ago, among the students. Popular as a joke, but are you sure it has any bearing in fact? And apart from that, are you sure it isn't just the same old school legends that get passed down from generation to generation?"
Dorian shrugged. "Look, all I know is what I was told. At the time Philby seemed quite genuinely terrified, but whether he was thinking of some monstrous beast from the past or of the sanity of his mentor, I have no idea. The story started with him, though, so you can rest assured that it's no older than I am." He smirked.
Everyone, including Pitt (who was by now at least used to the antics of the League), rolled their eyes. "Well, that's a comforting thought, mate," Skinner muttered. "You're no older than dirt, you are. Freshest news this side of the fish market."
Tom and Huck giggled. Dorian shot a glare in what he thought was the invisible man's direction.
"Fable or fact, we're about to find out." Henry, for once, was at the head of the queue to knock on the door, teeming with scientific curiosity. Nemo remained at the back, arms folded, thoroughly skeptical of what they would encounter. Henry looked back over his shoulder to make sure they were all assembled.
"Well, go on, then," came the voice from thin air.
He took a deep breath and rapped sharply on the door, then stepped back hurriedly.
"No visitors!" came a panicked voice after a few minutes. "No visitors... we can't have visitors here. Go away!"
The League exchanged glances, and Dorian sighed irritably. "Philby, open the damn door. It's me, Dorian."
There was a short pause, and then a small metal plate slid back to reveal a bloodshot eye with the familiar wrinkles of sleep deprivation around it. "Dorian? What do you want? Long way from London, aren't you?" The eye looked him up and down. "You can't be Dorian... you must be his son, sent here to drag the story out of me one more time so he can go back to Eton and lecture about it in some sordid study..."
"I've aged well," Dorian drawled. "Let me in, Philby, or I'll go fetch the gendarmes and tell them about your lovely opium habit. As tolerant as Paris is about such behavior, they'll at least be forced to do a cursory inspection of your house, and I'll come in anyway. It's me and my friends, or me and the gendarmes. Your choice, of course. I'll be waiting, but not too long." He turned around and leaned on the doorframe, waiting.
A moment passed, and then they heard the bolt slide back in the door, the sound of several locks opening. The crack of light that shone through revealed a rabbity man in the latter stages of middle age and the early stages of death by alcohol, who skittered at his own shadow and seemed more nervous than Jekyll.
"Come in..." he muttered to the floor. "Come in... but be quick.. .he'll wake up shortly, and ..."
"Philby!" a voice roared from upstairs. "What the blazes are you doing down there?"
The rabbity man jumped about a foot into the air and scurried up the stairs. "Nothing! It's nothing. It's just the wind..."
There was another of those looks exchanged between League members. Dorian, apparently used to this kind of behavior, only sighed and went upstairs, pushing Philby aside as he did so.
"Dorian!" Philby reached out and plucked at the man's sleeve as he passed, but Dorian shook him off easily. "Please..." He turned to the rest of the League, who were standing there blinking at him, bemused. "Please, you have to leave. You have to leave now, before he comes down. It's for your own..."
"What is this?"
The quavering voice held more conviction and strength of will than Philby's, although the man had to be at least two decades his senior. Dorian gave what assistance he could to the ancient man who descended the stairs, but it was clear that his help was neither wanted nor needed.
"I'm Dr. Pearce," he said quite calmly. "What can I do for you?"
"We were interested in your time machine," Dorian said even as Jekyll stepped up to try and find a diplomatic way to come around to the subject. "Whether or not it really works, and whether or not you actually discovered whole new species with it."
Tom sighed and turned as if to go. "Well, I guess we're not needed here," he drawled. Huck gently stopped him from actually walking out the door.
"Are you now... young Gray, wasn't it?" Pearce smirked. "I should think you'd've discovered that for yourself, considering you haven't aged a day in fifty years or so. No, longer than that, hasn't it been?"
Dorian didn't comment.
Philby whipped around, as though he'd heard or felt something.
"We'd like your help to solve a series of crimes," Pitt said, evidently feeling that someone a little more diplomatic had better take charge. "Quite frankly, they have the Special Branch, Interpol... the entire international police community baffled. Mr. Gray seemed to feel that you might have some special knowledge of the subject."
"Indeed..." The old man's hard gaze fell upon Pitt and stayed there, as though seeing how long it would take the Inspector to flinch. "And you would be ... which? Special Branch or Interpol?"
"Special Branch, sir," Pitt said calmly, unflinching.
The old man cackled. Henry and Philby jumped, and Huck shivered. "Excellent, then! I will help you... on one condition. Indeed, it is a condition I must insist upon, or I won't be able to leave Paris much less travel to what you say... the scene of the crime."
"And that condition is?"
"I have a certain problem of my own with the police... if you would take care of it for me..."
"Just a moment!"
And there was something even more unnatural about the bumbling, cheerful old man in the laboratory coat and inch-thick glasses who was now shuffling towards them.
"Ah... you'll be the men the government sent to collect me." He rubbed his hands together in an action that reminded Tom of a fly more than anything human. "Agent Sawyer, Agent Finn..." Both nodded. "Captain... Nemo, is it?" He peered at the Indian pirate through the glasses as though he thought he might see something through them that no one else had yet. The pirate shifted uncomfortably, already disliking the man. "Interesting. Interesting...."
He cleared his throat and continued to look them over. "Dr. Jekyll, yes, I have read about your strange case... Mr. Gray, I don't believe I've had the pleasure. Inspector Pitt, Inspector Abberline... So Scotland Yard has an interest in this case as well? How curious..." Sebastian had been locked in his quarters and Tellman had been left on the ship, as no one had been sure how either would react. "And..." he stared at the floating trenchcoat and hat. Skinner, in a fit of pique, had flatly refused to wear any whiteface and had to be persuaded to wear clothing at all. Tom couldn't really say that it wouldn't have been handy to have an invisible spy running around making sure the doctor was who he said he was, but he'd been outvoted.
"Your vision's fine..." Skinner said wearily.
"Mr. Skinner. How ... interesting. I'd head of Griffin's formula, naturally... but I had also heard it had died with him."
"Let's just say that that circumstances of his death were ... changed... and leave it at that, shall we?"
Jekyll shifted his stance uncomfortably, hoping no one had noticed.
Dr. Moreau stared at Skinner for a little while longer, then finally shrugged. "As you like... As you like."
Tom choked. Dust flew, and everyone turned to look at him. He pulled his hand back from the shelf where he had been poking around through the papers, but not before Huck swatted him gently upside the head. "Sorry..."
"Quite all right, Agent Sawyer... Quite all right." Dr. Moreau tittered, a strange noise that sounded more and more like madness to Tom. "I doubt you would be able to understand the notes at any rate... unless you have a more keenly scientific mind than I think you have...? No? Yes, of course... you are the investigators of crime, and I am the investigator of science..."
Now just about everyone in the League was fidgeting uncomfortably, worried or startled by the man, with two exceptions. Nemo was entirely unflappable and Abberline, apparently, had been inured to madness by his long association with the strange Sebastian Kane.
"And as investigators of crime, sir, we've come to ask you to donate your time and scientific expertise to the ongoing investigation of international... child kidnappers." Huck, no less intimidated by the giggling scientist than Tom, nevertheless managed to get out a polite invitation.
"Oh? And why would a biologist specializing in animal research..." It came out with every syllable enunciated, a-ni-mal re-search. "Be of use to you in your investigation of kidnappers. Are they using dogs? Or... there was a case recently in the Strand involving a mix up between a child and a monkey..."
Huck looked helplessly at Jekyll, their resident man of science.Tom just shrugged.
"There are certain... indicators in tissue samples left by the kidnappers that they are... not entirely human." Henry temporized.
Dr. Moreau's face darkened so rapidly and so far that Tom, Huck, and Jekyll all stepped back several paces, nearly behind the other four. Old as he was (and, from what Tom had read in his file, he had to be ancient), he looked capable of as much fury and destruction as Hyde, in a package as inoffensive as Jekyll.
"So you came to me, thinking that I had something to do with this? You want to see my creations, do you? Interrogate my children? Well, let me tell you something, my good friends... you may think you know what it is that I do here, but you know nothing of what it is that I am creating! I have seen the beast in my microscope, and I have chained him. I have taken the devil out of the beast, and replaced it with the angel in the man. I have surpassed God's directive to be master over the animals and made them masters of themselves. And I have taught my children better than to be the sorts of base, vile creatures that man has since become!"
By the end of the speech the doctor had flecks of spittle flying from his mouth, his eyes wide and bulging. Jekyll looked as though he might faint if Skinner hadn't been directly behind him, prepared to catch him if he keeled over. Tom and Huck were both standing on the balls of their feet, hands at the butt ends of their guns.
To their surprise it was Abberline who stepped forward and slapped the doctor smartly across the face. "Control yourself, man," he snapped. "If we thought it was your creations that had been carrying out these kidnappings we would already have arrested you. It's your mind we need, not your animals." He wiped his hand off on a kerchief and looked the doctor up and down, disdainful. "Although if you've descended so far into senility perhaps our trip has been wasted."
Tom gaped.
The doctor blinked. His eyes seemed to clear, and he shrank back into himself. "Sorry... sorry. My apologies. I thought..." he shuffled backwards, heading out the door. "Never mind. I'm sorry."
"Sir..." Tom reached out to touch the man's shoulder, and Moreau shrank away again. "We think your expertise might help us identify who or what is kidnapping these children. That's why we're here... not to persecute you in any way."
"We'd like your assistance on the case," Pitt stepped forward, speaking gently and calmly. "Quite frankly, this is far beyond our normal beat. We're investigators, keepers of the peace. We're not scientists, biologists or chemists. We couldn't tell if the samples we took from the kidnapping sites are human or semi-human, our forensics teams at Scotland Yard and Special Branch aren't up to that sort of detection. And we have only a single scientist working on the case right now. We'd like a dozen, at least. Specialists in the field... the sorts of people who would know the right questions to ask." He approached the doctor slowly, hands out, trying not to make any threatening gestures.
"I see..." the doctor said slowly. "Yes. Yes, I think I see. And of course you must have the best, the fastest, eh? To be able to save your children in time, you must find out all you can... yes. I see where you are going." Now that his morality and the integrity of his so-called children were not being called into question he had returned to the almost bumbling friendliness of earlier. The transformation was so abrupt it was frightening. "Very well... very well, then. Who am I to stand in the way of justice and, of course, the safety of a number of children."
"Hundreds of children, sir." Pitt's face was grave, but it was clear that he was still pleading to the scientist's ego and what perhaps remained of his better nature. "This epidemic of kidnapping is world-wide, and it appears to have escalated only within the last few months."
"I see... yes, I do see." The doctor straightened. "Very well! I will pack... I suppose we had better leave at once, if we are to arrive in..."
"London." Tom supplied shortly, leaving it up to Nemo whether or not to disclose any information about his craft.
"London? Yes, yes of course, we had better leave immediately. Shoo!" Dr. Moreau made abrupt flapping motions that had at least half of the League scurrying suddenly to get out of his way, as though madness or senility was contagious. "Shoo! Out! I must pack. Return in... one hour! Yes, an hour, that will be sufficient time."
They filed out slowly, still looking at each other as though wondering if this was as good an idea as it had seemed a week ago. Tom and Huck, the last to leave, could still hear the doctor muttering to himself as he gathered things together on the desk.
"Are you sure he's actually going to be useful?" Huck murmured.
"It's not his usefulness that worries me... I've heard stories of Skinner's predecessor." Tom sighed, glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were really out of earshot before he said what was on his mind. "It's his defensiveness about his so-called children. Yeah, they probably didn't kidnap anyone... but what ... what's he been doing out there that he thinks we might think that?"
Huck blinked. "Don't follow."
"Think about it... he was defensive, really angry about us coming here and accusing him of kidnapping children. But he didn't sound surprised... he didn't sound as though it was unexpected that someone in the government might come here to shut him down, or worse. He actually sounded as though he'd expected that his children might get out and start doing... I don't know. Really terrible things."
Huck stopped in his tracks and stared at his friends, then turned and looked a little ways down the hill at the small house surrounded by barns, silos, buildings. He looked around at the fences and the empty and half-empty bags of food. He looked back over at Tom, who shrugged.
"Welcome to the League," he murmured wryly, and trotted off to follow the group.
Huck stared at the house a little while longer before he turned and walked away.
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Sebastian Kane paced up and down the corridors of the suite that he and Inspector Abberline unwillingly shared, tapping his walking stick in anger and frustration. Bad enough that he'd been kept prisoner for the past eighteen years. Worse still that his abilities, his skills had been hampered by the bastards Abberline had hired. The damned witches were keeping him locked up, a prisoner inside his own body. He had no idea where the bastard had gotten them. The only other magician of any sort in all of England that he could think of was Crowley, and that lad was barely out of his childhood phase of self-indulgence and pleasure...
His face contorted into a hideous scowl at the thought. Magicians of that sort were the worst kind, giving a bad name to the whole breed.
Commotion in the corridors... the others were back with their pet scientists. Those on the American continent, anyway; from what Sebastian had overheard in conversations they had at least two more stops to go before they returned to England, and a substantial amount of land travel to do as well. Of course, he would not be allowed off the ship. No one trusted him further than they could see him. Furious, Sebastian tried the doorknob again, prepared to jerk it off the door if he had to.
The door came open directly, nearly braining him in the center of his forehead.
He frowned suspiciously at it, then looked up. The well-dressed, young-looking chap with an aura about him that was so black he could barely be seen through it was leaning against the wall a little down the corridor, smirking.
"The others are all up in the war room, discussing their next port of call. I thought you might like to stretch your legs."
Sebastian's eyebrows arched upwards. "Out of the goodness of your heart? Please, Mr. Gray, I'm not so far gone as to believe that."
Dorian shrugged. "Out of my perverse sense of whimsy, then. Or perhaps a shared sentiment that the others are a bit too high-handed with their morals?" He turned and started down the corridor, seemingly indifferent to Sebastian's further actions. After a moment the older-looking gentleman followed him.
"I have heard rumors, but no one has actually related the story to me... what did you do to be regarded with such suspicion?"
Dorian tilted his head at the other man, wryly amused that he of all people would be asking that particular question. "You really want to know?"
Sebastian shrugged slightly. "Call it my own perverse sense of whimsy."
"I betrayed the rest of the League for my own personal gain and well-being. I collected them all for a megalomaniacal madman and then attempted to blow them up after making my escape." He related the incident in those two brief sentences with the exaggeratedly bored tone of someone for whom the incident still held memories of suffering. "What hideous crime did you commit to be shackled to that old bastard?"
"I killed several people to complete a magickal ritual to extend my life. Besides, they were whores. Women of loose morals and no importance, a symptom of the decay of society. I did the city a service and sent a much-needed message, written in letters of blood so that they would not fail to see."
Dorian made a slight snickering noise. "Unfortunately I believe they did... London is no less steeped in its own juices than it was ..." he narrowed his eyes at the other man. "In 1888."
"Yes, well. I was interrupted." Sebastian scowled again, fierce enough to make even Dorian step back and consider that maybe there was a reason the madman had been locked up in his rooms.
"So that was you."
"Yes."
Dorian stopped in the hallway; out of politeness, Sebastian stopped and waited for him. The immortal looked the magician up and down, evaluating him on some scale that Sebastian couldn't quite discern... and, to be honest about it, didn't really care to either. He simply folded his hands along the pommel of his stick and waited for the other man to finish his evaluation.
"Magic, you said?"
They resumed the walk. "Magick," Sebastian corrected his pronunciation. "Alchemy, astrology... the rituals and practices that allow us to see and control forces outside of normal human abilities."
Dorian shook his head. "I'm afraid you must be mad," he said, prepared to explain why he didn't believe the other man. Sebastian, however, only laughed.
"You, a veritable Immortal, are telling me that you do not believe I have a practical knowledge of magick?"
Dorian shut up.
"There are strange forces at work, and they are all around you. The average, ordinary man or woman does not see them, does not believe in them, lives his or her life trapped in the existance of an utterly banal mind. For those of us certain few who, either though a family lineage or through fortuitous associations, have learned that there is more to the world than we can simply see or hear... we study how to manipulate it, how to turn the rules and laws of magick to our own ends."
Dorian glanced over at the lecturing man who accentuated every point with a tap of his walking stick. Immortal he may have been, but this Sebastian was making him thoroughly uncomfortable with his obsessions and his strange ideas. The thought that he was having such a ludicrous conversation with the murderer of the East End did not help, although there had been rumors of strange events and rituals ever since Crowley had popped up with his ridiculous proclamations. And speaking of whom...
"So you are a follower of that Crowley fellow..." he ventured.
"That ignorant son of a motherless goat couldn't find his own arse in the dark with both hands and a compass," Sebastian snarled, back in the towering fury in which Dorian had found him. "He's a drugged and drunk pretender, a man who parades his addictions about as the means to a divine end."
"You don't feel strongly about this at all, do you," Dorian murmured to himself. Fortunately the madman didn't seem to hear.
"I follow a different path. A path of more... brutal efficiency than his path of corruption and degeneration. A more nobler path than his self-indulgence and his weak-minded decay of the flesh and the soul..."
Sebastian waxed eloquent on that subject for the next fifteen minutes. It didn't seem to occur to him that there was any sort of a world outside of his own narrow view, extreme at both ends, with no middle ground. Dorian tried not to look too bored, actually rather afraid for... well, not for his life. But if Sebastian really was a magician... and he had to be, or else why would he be on this ridiculous trip in the first place... Dorian was sure the man could find all sorts of hideous fates and punishments for him that didn't involve dying.
Besides, he was very sure that the madman would not approve of his former lifestyle in the slightest. No matter how much it might have been curbed since then by returning to take up with the League.
Suddenly, and with a pang that was startling in its ferocity, Dorian missed Mina. He missed her biting sarcasm, her fierce mind... her intelligence and wisdom that was untainted by any form of psychological disorder or inner tragedy. Not that she herself was perfectly ordinary... but of all of them she had been the only one he could ever talk to without wanting to escape the room five minutes later. Their relationship had been a failure, true... not that it had ever been a proper relationship in the first place. But he had few enough friends left, fewer who truly knew who and what he was. And she was one of those rare few.
And he had tried to destroy her.
Annoyed with himself, Dorian slipped down a side passage and was gone with Sebastian in mid rant. The mad magician stared after him, trailing off into silence when he thought the immortal could no longer hear, eyes narrowed and thoughtful. Perhaps there was more to him than just the pitch-black aura with the consistency of tar. He had shown some real potential there, towards the end, when Sebastian had started running out of synonyms and energy, and Dorian had run out of patience.
To be sure, the emotions behind the tirade had been genuine. Sebastian's lip still curled at the thought of the hideous waste of human life that made up the better part of the world. But, with his first experiment in public awareness turning into a dismal failure, he had opted to bide his time. His experiments had not, as Abberline thought, been a complete failure. He now had time to wait and see, time to outlast and outlive the annoying police inspector, and perhaps even the witches that worked for him. He did not, as the young Mr. Gray seemed to, have forever. But then, he didn't really need forever, and he enjoyed the sense of vulnerability, of humility, of his own frailty that remaining mortal gave him.
Perhaps in exchange for the return of his own mortality, Dorian Gray could be persuaded to help him, if only to achieve a certain measure of freedom for them both.
Sebastian smirked and made his way carefully back down the corridor, lest someone see him and report it to the Inspector. He didn't want his already dubious freedoms curtailed any further than they already were.
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"Are you absolutely certain?"
Nemo never would have thought it came down to this. That Dorian Gray, the man who had conspired to destroy his Nautilus with all his men and the League aboard, should warn him about a threat to the safety of the crew and passengers... it was unthinkable. And yet here they were, not an hour from the docks of Paris, heads together as they walked and discussed the possibility that a notorious serial killer was on board.
"Well, no, he didn't exactly come out and say it in so many words. But it all fits... the Inspector's presence, the things he's said... his manner, the way he looks at..." Dorian shook his head. "Put it this way, Nemo, do you really want to take a chance? The man is obviously a lunatic."
Nemo sighed. This was the absolute limit. It wasn't enough that he had a contingent of mad scientists aboard... not one, oh no. The first, Dr. Moreau, had not been the last of the babbling buggers to board his ship. Every doctor on the lists of the various government employees seemed to have something amiss in his brain. And now perhaps one of their own was equally disturbed, and homicidal to boot. No wonder Henry had retired.
"Well, I'll keep an eye on him," Nemo said more loudly for the benefit of the others, ending the discussion before his headache could grow any worse. "Now, who was this man you said you thought we had missed?"
Dorian shrugged. "The man's name is Philby, but it's not him we're after. Back when I was at university he started a rumor about a madman who claimed to have invented a device to travel through time."
Nemo, Jekyll, and Pitt stopped in their tracks. Tom and Huck had to back-track to rejoin them. "A physicist," Henry said, frowning. "Dorian, what use is a physicist going to be? We're not dealing with some perversion of the laws of gravity."
"Perfect," Pitt muttered, his temper fraying at the edges from having to deal with Tellman, Abberline, and all the strangeness of the Nautilus passengers. "Another insane scientist."
"It's not the machine itself that I thought about," Dorian said with the patience and superiority of someone concealing the best for last. "It's the adventures Philby said the man had when he was... well, out of time."
They resumed walking, slowly, more because Dorian had started towards the Rue de Peletier than out of any real desire to meet this man. "So all you have is the word of a man who may or may not have heard his ... teacher, I presume? Who may or may not be in his right mind." Nemo sighed. "Dorian, if this is another trick."
Dorian rolled his eyes.
"I think I heard of that story..." Henry frowned. "It was just being passed around at the university a year or two ago, among the students. Popular as a joke, but are you sure it has any bearing in fact? And apart from that, are you sure it isn't just the same old school legends that get passed down from generation to generation?"
Dorian shrugged. "Look, all I know is what I was told. At the time Philby seemed quite genuinely terrified, but whether he was thinking of some monstrous beast from the past or of the sanity of his mentor, I have no idea. The story started with him, though, so you can rest assured that it's no older than I am." He smirked.
Everyone, including Pitt (who was by now at least used to the antics of the League), rolled their eyes. "Well, that's a comforting thought, mate," Skinner muttered. "You're no older than dirt, you are. Freshest news this side of the fish market."
Tom and Huck giggled. Dorian shot a glare in what he thought was the invisible man's direction.
"Fable or fact, we're about to find out." Henry, for once, was at the head of the queue to knock on the door, teeming with scientific curiosity. Nemo remained at the back, arms folded, thoroughly skeptical of what they would encounter. Henry looked back over his shoulder to make sure they were all assembled.
"Well, go on, then," came the voice from thin air.
He took a deep breath and rapped sharply on the door, then stepped back hurriedly.
"No visitors!" came a panicked voice after a few minutes. "No visitors... we can't have visitors here. Go away!"
The League exchanged glances, and Dorian sighed irritably. "Philby, open the damn door. It's me, Dorian."
There was a short pause, and then a small metal plate slid back to reveal a bloodshot eye with the familiar wrinkles of sleep deprivation around it. "Dorian? What do you want? Long way from London, aren't you?" The eye looked him up and down. "You can't be Dorian... you must be his son, sent here to drag the story out of me one more time so he can go back to Eton and lecture about it in some sordid study..."
"I've aged well," Dorian drawled. "Let me in, Philby, or I'll go fetch the gendarmes and tell them about your lovely opium habit. As tolerant as Paris is about such behavior, they'll at least be forced to do a cursory inspection of your house, and I'll come in anyway. It's me and my friends, or me and the gendarmes. Your choice, of course. I'll be waiting, but not too long." He turned around and leaned on the doorframe, waiting.
A moment passed, and then they heard the bolt slide back in the door, the sound of several locks opening. The crack of light that shone through revealed a rabbity man in the latter stages of middle age and the early stages of death by alcohol, who skittered at his own shadow and seemed more nervous than Jekyll.
"Come in..." he muttered to the floor. "Come in... but be quick.. .he'll wake up shortly, and ..."
"Philby!" a voice roared from upstairs. "What the blazes are you doing down there?"
The rabbity man jumped about a foot into the air and scurried up the stairs. "Nothing! It's nothing. It's just the wind..."
There was another of those looks exchanged between League members. Dorian, apparently used to this kind of behavior, only sighed and went upstairs, pushing Philby aside as he did so.
"Dorian!" Philby reached out and plucked at the man's sleeve as he passed, but Dorian shook him off easily. "Please..." He turned to the rest of the League, who were standing there blinking at him, bemused. "Please, you have to leave. You have to leave now, before he comes down. It's for your own..."
"What is this?"
The quavering voice held more conviction and strength of will than Philby's, although the man had to be at least two decades his senior. Dorian gave what assistance he could to the ancient man who descended the stairs, but it was clear that his help was neither wanted nor needed.
"I'm Dr. Pearce," he said quite calmly. "What can I do for you?"
"We were interested in your time machine," Dorian said even as Jekyll stepped up to try and find a diplomatic way to come around to the subject. "Whether or not it really works, and whether or not you actually discovered whole new species with it."
Tom sighed and turned as if to go. "Well, I guess we're not needed here," he drawled. Huck gently stopped him from actually walking out the door.
"Are you now... young Gray, wasn't it?" Pearce smirked. "I should think you'd've discovered that for yourself, considering you haven't aged a day in fifty years or so. No, longer than that, hasn't it been?"
Dorian didn't comment.
Philby whipped around, as though he'd heard or felt something.
"We'd like your help to solve a series of crimes," Pitt said, evidently feeling that someone a little more diplomatic had better take charge. "Quite frankly, they have the Special Branch, Interpol... the entire international police community baffled. Mr. Gray seemed to feel that you might have some special knowledge of the subject."
"Indeed..." The old man's hard gaze fell upon Pitt and stayed there, as though seeing how long it would take the Inspector to flinch. "And you would be ... which? Special Branch or Interpol?"
"Special Branch, sir," Pitt said calmly, unflinching.
The old man cackled. Henry and Philby jumped, and Huck shivered. "Excellent, then! I will help you... on one condition. Indeed, it is a condition I must insist upon, or I won't be able to leave Paris much less travel to what you say... the scene of the crime."
"And that condition is?"
"I have a certain problem of my own with the police... if you would take care of it for me..."