THE PATH OF PROGRESS, by Brian Stableford

1.

The upper floors of the house overlooking Holland Park were almost completely dark, because the windows were shuttered in the continental style and all the shutters had been closed. Chinks of white gaslight showed through the wooden slats in one of the ground-floor rooms—Sir Julian Templeforth’s study—and it was just possible to glimpse the ruddy glow of firelight in the master bedroom, which was doubtless being made comfortable in advance of the baronet’s retirement. The unshuttered windows of the servants’ quarters in the basement were, by contrast, all aglow with yellow candlelight; the staff still had two hours of the working day ahead of them.

Mathieu Galmier took off his hat before he rang the bell at the gate, acutely conscious of the fact that a Frenchman—even a former Professor of Medicine at the Sorbonne—was expected to be humble in this part of London, even before lackeys who were not, strictly speaking, English themselves. It was a long time since Britain and France had last been formally at war, but no one in the British Isles had forgotten Waterloo, and those who read the newspapers knew that any vestiges of French dignity that had survived Bonaparte’s fall had been shattered and ground into the dust at Sedan, less than twenty years ago.

The concierge, Reilly—who preferred to be called a porter—scowled at Mathieu as he opened the gate, and did not trouble to accompany him to the perron, to which Sir Julian always referred as “the front steps”. Cormack, the butler who answered the door in response to the second bell, was too haughty to scowl, but that did not mean that he looked upon his master’s guest with any conspicuous approval. Cormack was duty-bound to accompany Mathieu to the study door and introduce him, once he had collected the visitor’s rain-soaked coat and hat, but he was not required to purge his conscientiously-schooled voice of all disdain, and he took full advantage of that license.

Sir Julian was endeavoring to relax in a leather-upholstered armchair with a glass of brandy and a volume from Mudie’s library, but he gave the impression of having a great deal on his mind. He made no show of being glad to see his visitor, but he got to his feet, smoothed the creases in his blood-red waistcoat and adjusted the ruffed sleeves of his old-fashioned shirt.

“Come in, Professor,” Sir Julian said, suppressing a sigh and inviting Mathieu with a casual gesture to take his armchair’s twin, positioned on the other side of the fireplace. “Is there a problem with regard to tomorrow’s appointment?”

Mathieu sat down. He declined the glass of brandy that Sir Julian offered him by means of another quasi-theatrical gesture. The baronet waved Cormack away; the butler closed the study door behind him, ostentatiously clicking the catch to emphasize that his master’s privacy was guaranteed.

“There is a problem, Sir Julian,” Mathieu said, bluntly. “As I warned you at the time, I was unable to retain enough of the agent following the last administration to continue the principal course of the experimental scheme. Given the desperate need to find a means of reproducing the agent, if the project is not to reach an impasse….”

“What you mean,” Sir Julian said, cutting him off, “is that you want me to bring you more money tomorrow.”

“I do need more money, Sir Julian,” Mathieu said, tiredly, relaxing into the comfortable leather upholstery in spite of his anxiety and determination to remain alert, “but I also need more…volunteers. If you continue to increase your personal demand for the agent—and I’m not denying your need for larger and more frequent doses—then the supply has to be increased commensurately. It’s as much in your interest as mine that I find a means of producing the agent in vitro. I told you when we began this project that I could not put a firm price on the achievement, nor specify a time-limit. Organic chemistry is in its infancy, as is microbiology. We’re explorers and pioneers, attempting to beat the path of progress on a trackless frontier.”

“Don’t talk like some damned American,” Sir Julian observed. “You’re a man of science, not an Indian scout. You were supposed to be Pasteur’s most promising pupil—the man to take medical biology into a new era. Perhaps I should have befriended the one with the Russian name and left you to the mercy of the gendarmerie. It’s all very well for you to talk about needing an increased supply, more money and more time—we all need time, and my need is the most pressing of all. Your job is to deliver it, not to demand it. I don’t understand this obsession with inducing the so-called agent to reproduce. The original idea was simply to extract it and employ it as a vaccine, like Jenner’s. It wasn’t supposed to require more than one dose, let alone doses of increasing magnitude and frequency. I understand that explorers don’t always find what they’re hoping to find, but when they don’t, they have to tailor their plans to what they do find. Cormack can get you more raw material easily enough, I suppose, but there are risks, as you know only too well.”

“The risks will be a thing of the past,” Mathieu told him, “if and when I can find a substrate that will enable me to maintain and reproduce the agent outside the human body. If that can be done, we won’t need any more…raw material.”

“If and when,” Sir Julian repeated, thumping the am of his chair with a closed fist. “It’s always if and when with you, Monsieur Galmier. Well, girls are cheap enough, and there’s no shortage of supply, but you’re already costing me too dear in rent, laboratory equipment and living expenses. There’s a limit to the indulgence you can expect in terms of buying new equipment and messing about with substrates.”

Sir Julian was staring at Mathieu in a markedly insistent fashion, as if he were attempting to mesmerize his visitor, or at least to dominate him by the power of his will. The stare was difficult to resist, even though it had no occult force. Mathieu had to admit though, that the baronet had the appearance of an idealized natural aristocrat, possessed of an innate right to rule. Sir Julian’s actual title was meager, but his bearing was not; he gave the impression of being a seventeenth-century Cavalier displaced into the nineteenth century by some freak of time, reminiscent of a lush Dutch portrait of Prince Rupert of the Rhine.

Sir Julian Templeforth was an exceptionally handsome man nowadays, Mathieu thought, proudly. There was nothing in the least unmasculine about him—indeed, he had an exceptionally robust and virile frame—but his face had a particular perfection of form and complexion that was rarely seen in a male of the species. His black hair was sleek and glossy, with a hint of a natural curl, and his sky-blue eyes had a clarity that was quite marvelous, even in the Celtic type that routinely combined dark hair with blue or green eyes. If ever there was an irresistible stare, Mathieu thought, this was it—but he had to resist it, if he could. Given that it was, in a sense, his invention, he ought to be able to do it.

“The extraction process runs much more smoothly now that I’ve mastered it,” the scientist persisted, patiently. “I’ve also improved the filtration process and acquired considerable skill in the purification of the agent, but I need to take the next step. Even if we were to set other considerations aside, and regard the project as a merely personal matter, we can’t be content to continue doing extractions at increasingly frequent intervals. Eventually, something will go wrong, in spite of all my precautions. Many of these girls are carrying multiple infections, none of which we fully understand. So far, in my opinion, you’ve been exceptionally lucky. I’ve been keeping close track of Elie Metchnikoff’s immunological work at the Institut, as well as Monsieur Pasteur’s quest for new vaccines and the latest advances in apochromatic microscopy. Everything suggests that the range of pathogenic agents is much greater than was first supposed. If I can’t isolate the agent in which we’re interested, and discover out how to reproduce it in vitro, there’s a risk that you might lose everything I’ve so far been able to do for you.”

Sir Julian got to his feet, perhaps hoping to increase the dominating effect of his stare, but after looking down at his visitor for a few seconds he turned away. His eyes went to the portrait hanging over the fireplace: the portrait of his father, who had fought at Waterloo as a mere subaltern and had subsequently commanded a brigade in the Crimea, where he had somehow avoided being singled out by The Times as yet another glaring exemplar of British military incompetence. Sir Malcolm Templeforth had not been a handsome man, and his son—who looked far too young to be the older man’s child—did not resemble him at all.

“Things are bad in Ireland and getting worse,” Sir Julian said, suppressing another sigh. “Ever since Gladstone gave the rebels that first inch they’ve been determined to take far more than a mile. Even with an honest steward in place, the estate’s revenues are sinking like a stone. The poor fellow’s under siege. Even bog-Irish peasants are taught to read nowadays, it seems, and encouraged to delude themselves that they’re capable of philosophical thought. What they read, alas, is the radical press, and the form their philosophy takes is obsession with the rights of man, trades unions and all that nonsense. My tenants have formed some sort of association, it seems, and badger my steward daily with lists of grievances. He’s demanding, on their behalf, that I go over there—not requesting, you understand, but demanding. He won’t believe me when I say that I can’t, although you know full well that I really can’t leave London now. It wouldn’t do any good, of course, if I did go—the wretches complain bitterly about absentee landlords, but they make it impossible for anyone to work comfortably in residence.”

Mathieu did not know how to respond to this tirade, and began to wish that he had accepted the offer of a brandy, if only to have something to do with his hands.

“Anyway,” Sir Julian went on, “my purse isn’t bottomless, and I’m feeling the pinch at present. There’s no way I can increase my funds, except perhaps by marrying again, but the marriage market isn’t what it was thirty years ago. I could probably snag some damned American whose father’s in steel or oil, although they all seem to want an earldom at least, but that would take time.” He paused before adding: “You’re not thinking about looking for another backer, are you? You do realize how unwise that would be?”

The way the questions were phrased made them appear to be defensive moves in the face of a hypothetical threat, but Mathieu knew that they constituted a serious threat in themselves, and perhaps a deadly one. He had always known that Sir Julian was a dangerous man. At first, he had obtained a certain thrill from playing with fire—but he was older now, and the ultimate objective of his research seemed to be as far away as ever, in spite of all his efforts. Had he been prepared to serve as his own subject, he thought, his history might have been quite different. Unlike Sir Julian, though, he had never been reckless, rich or lucky.

“I’m fully aware of the trouble you could cause for me,” Mathieu observed, quietly, “and the violence you might do to me. I sometimes wonder whether I might have been thrown to the wolves already, or worse, had the agent been as successful as we first hoped.”

“And I sometimes wonder whether you might be playing me like a fish,” Sir Julian retorted, “keeping me hooked by deliberately doling out your drug in doses that become less effective by degrees, simply in order to keep extracting money for me to fund your greater ambitions. But we mustn’t let such suspicions get the better of us. We trusted one another once—it would be better for both of us if we still did.”

That was true, but Mathieu was saved from having to admit it by a discreet knock on the door.

Cormack waited for his master to call out a summons before he opened it, and came in hesitantly. “I’m very sorry to disturb you sir,” the butler said, “but I thought you ought to know that there is someone watching the house from the bushes in Holland Park. According to Reilly, he took up his post immediately after Mr. Galmier’s arrival, and might perhaps have been following him.”

Sir Julian fixed Mathieu with a different kind of stare, which testified eloquently to the extent of the loss of trust between them.

“I had no idea!” Mathieu protested. “I wouldn’t have been able to take a hansom, even if I’d tried, because of the rain….”

“That wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference, you fool,” Sir Julian said, hotly. “The point is, who is he? And how did you attract his attention in the first place?”

Mathieu shook his head, helplessly.

Sir Julian was not a man to waste time in circumstances like these. He went to the cabinet beside the door and took out his father’s old saber, with a promptitude that suggested to Mathieu that he always relished an opportunity to do so. Rumor had it that he had killed half a dozen men in duels—though none, as yet, on English soil.

“Tell Reilly to work his way around behind the fellow if he can,” the baronet instructed Cormack. “He’ll need a stout cudgel, but tell him not to wield it too brutally. We want to question the man, not split his skull. We’ll leave five minutes, then we’ll come out of the front door and make directly for the spy.”

Cormack nodded, and hurried away to relay the order. Sir Julian raised the saber and weighed it in his hand, in eager anticipation.

“The fellow can’t see anything, with all the shutters closed,” Mathieu pointed out. “His vigil will be wasted.”

“Even if he didn’t follow you here,” Sir Julian said, “he’ll probably follow you home, given the chance. The mere fact that he’s aware of our association means that he knows too much—enough, at any rate, for us to need to know exactly how much he does know, and what his interest is.” The baronet put on his black coat, donning a kind of emphatic arrogance with it that Mathieu could not help but think of as Rocambolesque, although Sir Julian would probably have preferred “Wellingtonian”. Cormack had brought Mathieu’s coat too, which was shabbier by far.

When the five minutes had elapsed, Sir Julian made for the main door of the house, beckoning to Mathieu as if he were commanding a footman. Mathieu followed, content to remain three paces in rear.

Sir Julian bounded down the steps and raced through the open gate, crossing the deserted street in three strides—but there were iron railings around the park, and the nearest gate was ten yards to one side, requiring an awkward detour. As Sir Julian headed for the gate there was a flurry of movement in the bushes beyond the railings, and the quarry set off like a startled hare.

Reilly, alas, was no greyhound. By the time Sir Julian had reached the place where the watcher had been stationed, the porter had already engaged the spy in a brief scuffle, but had been knocked down without being able to bring his cudgel into play. By the time Mathieu caught up with his patron, the baronet was fulminating at his aged retainer. Reilly complained in vain that the unknown man had been considerably taller, younger and stronger than he was, and that the grass had been exceedingly slippery after the rain.

Sir Julian rounded on Mathieu then. “This is your fault,” he declared, although Mathieu knew that no one had any real reason to suppose that it was. “Make sure that no one follows you home, if you can. I’ll come tomorrow, at seven, as arranged. You’ll have the usual delivery before noon, but I’ll try to make provision for another before the end of the week. I’ll bring some extra money for you—but I warn you that I expect results. You’d better find a means to grow the vaccine in a flask pretty damned quick, else you and I will need a further reckoning.”

“This kind of adventurous research can’t be done to order,” Mathieu said, feeling obliged to mount some kind of formal protest. “There’s no precedent to guide us.”

“Necessity,” Sir Julian stated, with not a hint of irony, “is the mother of improvisation. It was you who put yourself under its spur—where I’ve long grown used to living. There’s no use complaining that you need more time when the sand has all but run through the hour-glass. If that was a policeman, he’s more likely to be after you than me—which means that you need me even more than I need you, and not just for money. Whether you walk back to your lodgings or take a cab, keep looking behind you.”

2.

Cormack brought the girl in person, arriving shortly before noon, as promised. She was no more than thirteen, in Mathieu’s judgment, although she claimed when asked to be sixteen. Either way, she seemed unlikely to reach twenty, whatever was done or not done to her in the meantime. She told Mathieu that her name was Judy Lee, which he had no reason to doubt.

“Do you know why you’re here, Judy?” Mathieu asked, when Cormack had gone, leaving him alone with the girl in his laboratory, which was constructed in the only large room in his basement flat south of Goldhawk Road.

“Y’r gwin t’bleed me,” the girl said. “Bin cupped afore—din’ do me no good, though they said it would.” She looked around anxiously, intimidated by the mass of apparatus. She had surely never been to a public lecture at the Royal Institution, so the only place she might have seen such an assembly of equipment before was on the stage of some cheap theatre. Laboratory equipment had been the standard décor of exaggerated melodrama ever since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has been adapted for the Porte-Saint-Martin more than sixty years before.

“I’m not going to cup you,” Mathieu said, as soothingly as he could. “I’m going to insert two hollow needles into veins in your forearms. I’ll swab the flesh with alcohol first to sterilize it. The cooling effect of the alcohol’s evaporation will help numb the pain. I’m going to leave the needles in place for some time, so that I can put the blood I draw from one vein through a special filter, and then return it to the other. It might seem rather horrid, but it’s quite safe. One day, in the not-too-distant future, it will be standard practice in hospitals all over the world.”

“I had worse done to me,” Judy Lee reported, making an effort to remain laconic. Mathieu had no reason to doubt that, either. He thought it best to keep talking, not so much by way of paying lip-service to the principle of informed consent as to reassure her that this was something that he had done before, many times, and that it really would become a normal aspect of medical practice—scientific medical practice, not quackery or the obsolete traditions that the majority of physicians still insisted on following.

“You’re contributing to an important study, Judy,” he assured her. “You and I are adventurers on the path of progress.”

The girl attempted to smile, but she had not been a whore long enough to have mastered that kind of insincerity. She was still beautiful, as much because of the consumption that had begun to eat her away as in spite of it. The disease gave a certain semi-transparent gloss to the skin and sculpted her lean features, exaggerating the eyes in a strangely soulful fashion. He told himself that she would not be beautiful much longer, whether he intervened in the process of her deterioration or not, and that it might be good for her to be saved from a career of prostitution, if that turned out to be the result of her participation in his project.

One day, Mathieu thought, he would be able to pay back what he took from his “volunteers”, with abundant interest. Soon enough, if he were only allowed time and adequate financial support, he would find a way to isolate the bacillus—or whatever term he might invent to substitute for “bacillus”—and feed it in vitro, so that it would be able reproduce itself independently of its host. Then the transactions in which he dealt would no longer be a matter of robbing Petronella to pay Paul, but a matter of assisting in the evolution of humankind, of building a hitherto-unimaginable Utopia on the rickety foundations of London’s slums.

“French, aintcher?” the girl said, as the second needle went in. The original syringe, having injected the anti-clotting serum, had been hooked up to the pump and the filtration apparatus. Now Mathieu hooked up the second modified syringe, completing the circuit. He had good grounds, now, to be sure that he could feed at least three liters of the girl’s blood through the machine without undue risk, although he would have to give her careful instructions to limit subsequent blood-loss, given that the anti-clotting agent would remain in her bloodstream for anything up to three days. It had been the induced hemophilia that had caused two of the three fatal casualties in Paris, rather than the extraction process itself, but a Parisian tribunal would have been unlikely to appreciate the nice distinction. There had only been one fatal accident since he had decamped to London—but that would likely prove to be one too many, if the spy who had been watching Sir Julian’s house the night before really had been a policeman investigating his activities.

“That’s right,” Mathieu admitted, without looking up from his work. “I worked with Louis Pasteur before I came to London.”

“Heard o’ him,” Judy Lee boasted. “Germs ’n’ that.”

“That’s right,” Mathieu said, approvingly. “He’s developed a method of sterilizing milk too, and a treatment for rabies. A great man—a very great man. The Institut is also doing experiments in blood transfusion, now that the legal prohibition has been lifted. We lost two hundred years of potential progress in that regard, because the scientific method came into conflict with the law. The first blood transfusions were carried out within walking distance of this very spot, by Sir Christopher Wren—the man who designed Saint Paul’s Cathedral—in 1657. He was hoping to find a method of rejuvenation, but it turned out that one man’s blood is sometimes another man’s poison. My countryman, Jean-Baptiste Denis, was sued by the widow of a man who died in the course of one of his transfusion experiments, and the practice was outlawed.

“All that was necessary was to figure out a simple pattern of incompatibilities—even the primitive microscopes of the day would have been adequate to the necessary investigations—but the work wasn’t done because no one dared take the risk of prosecution. If they’d persisted, all kinds of surgery would have become safer and more effective two hundred years ago—the metalworkers of the day would have been easily able to produce hollow needles and Pravaz syringes, if only there had been a manifest need for them. As things turned out, though, it took another two hundred years to put together the kind of apparatus that could replace blood lost in surgery, just as I’m now replacing yours.

“Scientific medicine might have made vast strides in the eighteenth century, if only medical scientists had been permitted to experiment. Instead, there was a Golden Age of quackery, when all kinds of bizarre patent medicines flourished, while orthodox physicians fought tooth and nail to defend their own superstitions. The possible deaths of a few dozen or a few hundred volunteers in controlled experiments were prevented, while hundreds of thousands of people who had no choice at all died by virtue of licensed but misguided treatments, and millions more by virtue of ignorant inaction. Things are different now—very different—but the necessary research requires time, and money, which is direly hard to come by. If the governments of Europe would only take their responsibilities seriously, instead of spending all their time and revenues plotting and preparing for war, there’d be no need for self-serving buccaneers like Sir Julian Temp….”

He trailed off, realizing that his tongue had run away with him, and that it was perhaps as well that the girl could not be expected to understand what he was saying. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What I mean is that you’re helping in a great cause, and have every reason to be proud of yourself.”

“Doin’ it for the money,” she observed, dully. “Y’c’n buy a girl in Bethnal Green for a shilling—a guinea’s good scratch. Done worse for far less.”

Mathieu gritted his teeth. “One day,” he said, in a low voice, “my work will do wonders for girls like you. You’ll be its true beneficiaries, at the end of the day. The twentieth century will be a new Age of Miracles, not just for the rich but for everyone. Do you mind if I leave you now, just for a little while? I’ll come back in ten or fifteen minutes.”

Judy Lee nodded. Mathieu knew that he really ought to stay, but her taciturnity was putting undue stress on his conversational skills, and the atmosphere in the subterranean laboratory was becoming foul with the reek of blood. He needed fresh air—and today, fortunately, was one of the rare days on which London’s air really was fresh. Yesterday’s rain had washed the accumulated smog-particles out of the atmosphere, and a brisk south-westerly breeze was preventing its reformation. Although the new network of sewers had not yet taken up the entirety of the river’s burden, the days of the Great Stink were long gone.

Mathieu went up the steps to the pavement of the street and leaned against the railings protecting the hollow in which his front door was set. There was a faint unsteady vibration beneath his feet, which was primarily a side-effect of the construction-work on the underground railway, although the excavation of the sewers still had a minor contribution to make. London’s Underworld was a complex hive of activity now, with countless workers toiling round the clock in shifts, largely unnoticed by the denizens of the surface.

Men of science, Mathieu thought, were not unlike those subterranean laborers, their patiently heroic endeavors being largely unheeded by journalists and historians alike. The chroniclers of the modern world, like the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, paid close attention to the actions of kings, statesmen and generals, but rarely noticed the subtle revolutions in technology that were the true motor of history.

Mathieu realized, however, that he was not presently unobserved. There was a tall, lean man bundled up in a dark blue overcoat leaning casually on the railings of the house opposite, who never looked at him directly but never excluded him from his field of vision either. Mathieu had no idea whether it was the same man who had been watching Sir Julian’s house the previous evening, and had no way of determining whether or not the watcher might be a police detective, but he was in no doubt that he and his lodgings were under surveillance. The laboratory was invisible from the street, and from the back yard too—the apartment’s only front window looked into Mathieu’s kitchen, while the rear window was in his tiny bedroom—but that did not make him feel any more comfortable.

He went back inside immediately, and hurried back to the girl, who was drowsy but seemed as well as could possibly be expected. He fed her a small measure of port wine, holding the glass to her lips so that she did not have to move her arms. When he had detached the needles and bandaged the residual wounds he gave her a generous cup of hot sweet tea and a slice of toast with marmalade before sending her on her way. She was a little unsteady on her feet but she could walk perfectly well. She looked around as he ushered her through the hallway, taking what note she could of the circumstances of his life.

“I c’n come back, if y’like” she said, as he opened the door. “For company, mind, not blood.” She sounded genuinely hopeful, perhaps because he seemed a cut above her usual clients, or merely because she thought him a likely prospect.

“No,” he said, brusquely. “Please don’t come here again—not ever.” He knew that she probably would, when the after-effects set in, but he had learned to steel himself against such occasions, and to turn the visitors away.

The watcher on the other side of the street did not budge from his station when Mathieu escorted the girl back up to the pavement, and did not follow her when she made her way back to Goldhawk Road. He studied the girl as she walked away, though, before returning his eyes to Mathieu’s lodgings, abruptly enough to catch Mathieu’s gaze for a moment. Mathieu judged, as the two of them locked stares momentarily, that the other man knew perfectly well that he had been spotted, but did not care. The watcher’s eyes were dark and keen. His short-cropped hair gave him the appearance of a seaman, and the uneven coloring of his face suggested that he had recently shaved off a well-grown beard and moustache.

Mathieu hurried back to his laboratory, to begin work on the filtrate; it was a few minutes after four o’clock, and he was anxious to get the preparatory work done before Sir Julian arrived. He wanted the laboratory to be spick and span, to present an image of efficient, dedicated and productive labor. He wanted Sir Julian to feel confident that his money was being well spent, and would prove to be an excellent investment, on his own behalf and the world’s.

Mathieu tried to put Judy Lee’s image out of his mind. He did not want to see her again, under any circumstances. By the time her blood was clotting properly again—if she suffered no serious mishap before then—the change would be becoming noticeable. Within a week, at the most, the metamorphosis would be complete. Time would ameliorate the problem slightly, as the indwelling population of the agent began to increase again, but experience suggested that it would never be able to make up the deficit that his filtration had caused. All the evidence he had so far collected suggested that she would never recover what she had lost.

Mathieu split the filtrate into two unequal, parts: one for Sir Julian and one for the continuation of his in vitro experiments. He would dearly have loved to retain the larger fraction for the latter purpose, but he did not dare. Sir Julian’s need—if need were the right word—was increasing too rapidly. Had the baronet been given the choice, Mathieu would probably have been instructed to reserve all the filtrate for his use, but Mathieu still had power enough within their relationship to insist that the broader purpose be maintained. Sir Julian had had plenty of opportunity to see what happened to the “volunteers” who provided him with the means to maintain his condition, and he knew exactly how valuable Mathieu’s expertise was. As a last resort, the baronet might take the chance of replacing him with some ambitious graduate of Guy’s or St Thomas’s—but only as a last resort. Theirs was the kind of Faustian bargain that could not easily be substituted, on either side.

3.

While Mathieu was working on the filtrate, the oil-lamps illuminating the laboratory began to burn low. One of them went out, but it was the more distant of the two from his work-bench and he did not immediately get up to refill it. His supply of oil was running low, and it would be better to make do with one lamp, if he could, at least until Sir Julian had handed over the promised cash. His work would have been more brightly served by gaslight, of course, but the laboratory was only fitted with a single gas tap, which he reserved for his Bunsen burner.

Had Mathieu’s rooms been located under the eaves of the house, instead of in the basement, he would have been able to work by daylight, but when he and Sir Julian had selected his place of work they had both thought a windowless room best suited to their purpose. At that time, they really had imagined that a single dose of the “vaccine” might suffice to work a miracle that could be repeated a hundred times over, but the combination of Jenner’s practice and Pasteur’s theory had not been as simple as Mathieu had hoped. The fundamental thesis had been sound enough—it really did seem to be the case that Jenner’s vaccine worked because it transmitted a biological agent of some kind, rather than by observance of some strange homeopathic principle—but it had proved impossible to construct a strictly analogical procedure with respect to the agent that Mathieu’s fungal filters had caught. The human microcosm was, it seemed, even more complicated than the macrocosm that scientific astronomy had recently begun to reveal, with the aid of photography, spectroscopes and increasingly powerful lenses.

When Mathieu heard the click of a catch in the corridor outside the laboratory he immediately looked up at the clock, which indicated half past six. Sir Julian had a key to the front door, of course, and was not given to ringing doorbells, but he was a punctual man and it was unlike him to be early, even when he was anxious.

Mathieu looked around for something that might serve as a weapon, and picked up a scalpel from the bench. He moved to the door, but did not reach for the knob; instead, he positioned himself so that he would be concealed behind it if it were opened.

It did open, very quietly, and swung inwards slowly. That, too, was not Sir Julian’s way—he was a man more inclined to throw doors open and march in boldly, no matter what the circumstances of his arrival might be. Whoever was opening the door now was peering in gingerly, attempting to look around before setting foot across the threshold. Had the intruder been anyone with a legitimate reason for being there, he would surely have called out, but he seemed intent on maintaining the strictest silence.

Mathieu did not wait for the invader to step inside, but put his shoulder to the door while the other was still within the compass of its swing, and shoved it with all his might. The other, quite unprepared for such an assault, cursed loudly and yielded ground—but did not fall over and immediately began to shove back.

It was obvious to Mathieu that his adversary was the stronger man, for he felt himself gradually pressed back against the wall, trapped by the pressure of the solid wooden door. He reached round the batten and slashed downwards with the scalpel. The thrust brought forth another curse, but the blade had caught the sleeve of a thick overcoat, and it was not a wounding blow. The other leaned on the door even harder, trying to crush the breath from Mathieu’s body.

Mathieu cried out for help, although he had no reason at all to think that any might be close at hand. The crushing pressure continued, and he shouted again, knowing that he might not have enough breath left for a third appeal. He lashed out with the scalpel twice more, but now that his assailant knew that the instrument was in his hand, the thrusts cleaved empty air.

Mathieu knew that he was beaten, and had just decided to issue his surrender and beg for mercy when the weight pressing on the door was suddenly relieved. There was the noise of a sudden furious tussle on the other side of it, and then the sound of running feet as one of the two combatants—presumably the one who had been using the door to crush him—scrambled for the front door.

Mathieu moved around the door ready to greet his rescuer, assuming that he would see Sir Julian—but the man standing in the corridor watching his erstwhile opponent beat an ungainly retreat was the man who had been leaning on the railings opposite, watching the house. For a moment, Mathieu assumed that the wrong combatant had been bested, and raised the hand clutching the scalpel as if to stab is enemy—but then he realized that the watcher really had run to rescue him, and that the man who was now running up the steps beyond the front door was completely unknown to him. It seemed that Mathieu really had had a narrow escape, because the man who was running away was every bit as tall, and even more heavily-built, than the man who had come to his aid.

Mathieu hesitated over what to do next—and while he hesitated, the watcher from the far side of the street grabbed his wrist and disarmed him, saying: “No need for that, Frenchy.” His accent had a distinct cockney twang, but that was no guarantee that he was not a policeman. At close range, Mathieu was able to estimate that the darker parts of the man’s complexion were the consequence of exposure to tropical sunlight. The dark blue overcoat was, in fact, the sort worn by merchant seamen, and his heavily-callused hands provided that final proof that he was indeed a sailor recently returned from a long voyage.

“Who are you?” Mathieu finally found the courage to demand.

“A friend, it seems—at least for the moment.”

“Why were you watching my house? Have you been following me?”

“As a matter of fact,” the tall man said “I started off following the fellow who brought the girl.”

While this terse conversation was taking place, the newcomer’s gaze had made a careful tour of the gloomy laboratory. His dark eyes did not give much away, but Mathieu judged that he had not had the slightest expectation of seeing this kind of apparatus, and was now wondering what kind of alchemist’s den he had stumbled into.

“Why?” Mathieu asked, bluntly.

“Because I was told in Stepney that he once collected another girl in exactly the same fashion—one who hasn’t been seen since by her mother, sister or aunt.”

Mathieu’s heart sank. Not the police, then, he thought. At least not yet—but trouble all the same. On the other hand, he can’t be certain that the other girl was also brought here. “What do you want with me?” he asked, aloud.

“That I don’t quite know, as yet,” the stranger replied. “What did he want with you, do you think?” He nodded towards the door through which the other invader had made his escape, which still stood open.

“A common sneak-thief, I suppose,” Mathieu said, wishing that he sounded more convincing.

“This place reeks of blood,” the tall man observed. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

“Medical research,” Mathieu retorted, taking slight offense at the other’s tone. “Work for the benefit and progress of humankind.”

Perhaps remarkably, given that he seemed no better educated than the young whore, the stranger did not seem disinclined to take that statement at face value. “What kind of…?” he began, not unrespectfully.

The seaman did not have time to complete the sentence before a new voice cut in, saying: “I do not think, sir, that the professor’s work is any concern of yours.”

Mathieu and the stranger both turned to the open doorway, where Sir Julian Templeforth was now standing. The briefest sideways glance at the clock told Mathieu that the baronet was as punctual as ever.

The stranger looked the baronet up and down, and lowered his eyes reflexively in the face of that brilliant blue-eyed stare.

“Who is this, Mathieu?” Sir Julian demanded, with a note of accusation in his voice.

“I don’t know his name, sir,” Mathieu was quick to say, “but he came to my aid when I called for help just now, and frightened off a man who was attacking me—a burglar, I suppose, who must have thought the dwelling empty, having seen no light from the front.”

“I’m Thomas Dean, merchant seaman,” the tall man supplied, promptly, “lately second mate on the SS Hallowmas.”

Thomas Dean waited politely, but Sir Julian did not introduce himself. Instead, he reached into his jacket pocket for his pocket-book, saying: “We’re grateful for your help. Perhaps….”

“I don’t want your money,” the seaman interrupted, his voice turning harsh. “I want to know what’s going on here. I want to know what that girl was doing here this afternoon, and whether the same thing that was done to her, whatever it might be, was also done to my sister Caroline.”

Sir Julian’s eyes narrowed, and his hand fell away from his jacket pocket towards his britches, where there was a very conspicuous bulge. If Sir Julian wanted to carry a revolver, Mathieu thought, he might do better to wear looser-fitting trousers with more capacious pockets—like the ones the sailor had on. He found, somewhat to his alarm, that he could not remember Caroline Dean at all. He was at least fifty per cent sure, though, that the girl who had died—the only one, so far as he knew, to have died since he came to London—had had a different name.

“Mr. Dean followed a man who brought a young girl here this afternoon,” Mathieu said, trying to let his patron know, without giving the game away, that the seaman did not appear to be aware of the connection between Cormack and Sir Julian. He made a private observation that the lack of any such awareness made it unlikely that Thomas Dean had been the man who was watching the house in Holland Park on the previous night, before adding: “He thinks the same man might have taken his sister away. If so, Mr. Dean, he did not bring her here. He probably supplies girls to more than one client.”

Dean’s gaze went from Mathieu to Sir Julian and back again, then made another thoughtful tour of the laboratory. He made no attempt to hide his suspicions. “In that case,” he said, “I’d best take what I know to Scotland Yard, and let the police….”

The seaman broke off as Sir Julian produced the revolver from his pocket, but a slight smile flashed across his lips. Mathieu inferred that Dean’s suspicions had just been turned into certainty. As an officer on an ocean-going vessel he was presumably required to carry a gun himself on occasion, and he did not seem to be in the least intimidated by the weapon. Mathieu, on the other hand, knew that Sir Julian was as expert with a pistol as he was with a blade, and was certainly reckless enough to make use of his expertise if the impulse came upon him. The baronet had obviously leapt to the conclusion that Caroline Dean had been the girl who had died, even though he had a poorer memory for names of that sort than Mathieu.

Sir Julian closed the door behind him and turned the key in the lock. “You should have taken the money, lad,” he said, softly. “By the look of you, I doubt that your blood has anything to contribute to the professor’s research, but a man of science can always find a use for such stuff, if it comes to that. If you behave yourself, though, we’ll settle for tying you up and putting you to bed in the professor’s cupboard for a little while.”

Mathieu groaned audibly, knowing that the situation was now beyond all possibility of control. “What about the other one?” he murmured. “What if he turns out to be the one who was watching us in Holland Park?”

Sir Julian evidently had not considered that possibility. After a moment’s pause, though, he shrugged his shoulders. “We can’t stay here now, in any case,” he said. “It looks as if we’d best be Ireland-bound, no matter how much trouble the goddam rebels are causing over there. We’ll have to go ahead with tonight’s treatment, as planned, but then we must start packing up. Do you have some rope with which to tie the fellow up?”

“Only twine,” Mathieu said, looking towards the shelf that accommodated a stout ball of sturdy string.

“Best do a good job, then,” Sir Julian said. “He’s a sailor, after all, well used to dealing with knots. If he gets loose, I’ll have to shoot him—and that’s not what any of us wants.” This statement was, of course, intended to impress the logic of the situation upon Dean rather than Mathieu, but Mathieu could see, as he reached for the ball of string, that the seaman had made his own estimate of that logic.

Mathieu had quite forgotten the scalpel, and Sir Julian evidently had not noticed that Thomas Dean was carrying anything. The instrument was, after all, quite small and the seaman’s hand was larger than average. Mathieu’s blood ran suddenly cold as the sailor suddenly flipped his wrist and sent the scalpel hurtling towards Sir Julian’s face. The baronet saw it coming too late, and probably had no idea what it was until the object struck him full in the face. The sharp blade sliced into the cheek, about an inch below his right eye, and cut through the flesh until its progress was arrested by the cheekbone.

Sir Julian howled, more in wrath than in pain, and jerked his head to one side.

The wound bled copiously, but Mathieu could not imagine that it was serious. The blade fell to the floor, but Sir Julian had closed his eyes reflexively even as he raised the pistol in order to take aim. Before the baronet could open his eyes again, in order to complete the threatening gesture, Dean had grabbed Mathieu and pulled him into position as a human shield. Dean’s left arm was now around Mathieu’s neck, while the right held a much larger knife, with a curved blade and a serrated edge, which he must have had concealed about his person.

While Mathieu felt the point of Dean’s knife digging suggestively into his neck, not far from the carotid artery, Sir Julian tried to stem the blood coursing from his cheek with his left hand, while holding the revolver as steadily as he could in his right. Eventually, the baronet fished a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to the wound. The white cotton turned red, but the further flow of blood was inhibited. The baronet’s eyes were livid with anger, but he was in control of himself and his right hand was not trembling.

“Now,” said Dean, a trifle hoarsely, “let’s take stock. It seems that the man I put to flight might not have been a common-or-garden burglar after all—in which case, he might come back. On the whole, though, we’re not likely to be disturbed, at least for a little while. Time to complete the introductions, I think. Who are you?”

“Go to hell,” Sir Julian said. If Mathieu could read the sky-blue eyes correctly, Sir Julian was weighing up the possibility of taking a shot anyway, carefully weighing up his chances of hitting the seamen in the head without Mathieu ending up with a cut throat.

“I’m Mathieu Galmier, late of the Sorbonne and the Institut Pasteur,” Mathieu was quick to say. “I’m doing research in immunology, in parallel with Elie Metchnikoff in Paris. I didn’t hurt your sister, although I did put some of her blood through a special filter to remove certain infectious agents. If she never went home, it wasn’t because of anything I did.” He was by no means convinced that that was true, even if his memory could be trusted in its conviction that Caroline Dean had not been the girl who had died, but he hoped that he sounded believable, and that his word as a man of science might carry some weight with the seaman.

“And who’s he?” Dean demanded, meaning Sir Julian.

“He’s my patron,” Mathieu said, carefully refraining from supplying a name. “He’s also my patient—which is to say, one of my experimental subjects. As you can see, no harm has come to him by virtue of his involvement in my work.”

“I’ve rarely seen a man in such good trim,” the seaman admitted, suspiciously. “What are you treating him for—the pox?”

“That’s not your concern,” Sir Julian put in. “If I put down the gun, will you put down the knife, so that we can discuss the matter as civilized men?”

“It was you who uncivilized the situation in the first place,” Dean pointed out. “It’s not as easy to mend things as it is to break them, though. If you had nothing to hide, you’d hardly be planning to tie me up and flee to Ireland, would you?”

Silently, Mathieu cursed Julian Templeforth’s loose mouth and propensity for hasty action. “You don’t understand, Mr. Dean,” he said. “So many people simply don’t understand, even though the notion of drawing blood is perfectly familiar in medical practice. My syringes are neater and safer by far than leeches or cupping, but hollow needles still seem to intimidate the popular imagination, and the mere concept of experimentation seems to send shivers down the backs of many common folk. Have you any idea of the abuse that Louis Pasteur, the greatest benefactor of humanity this century has seen, has had to endure in the course of his researches, for his temerity in regarding the human body as a legitimate object of experimental study? If you had the least conception of the persecution that Ignatz Semmelweis underwent at the hands of physicians, for proving the necessity of sterile technique and demonstrating that they were infecting their patients with mortal diseases, you would not be in the least surprised that I prefer to work in secret, or that those who depend on my work might be a trifle over-anxious to preserve that secrecy.

“I am working for the betterment of the human condition, Mr. Dean, and would far rather do so in the open—but I need blood to feed my investigations, which no one is willing to supply but whores. If some misfortune really has befallen your sister, it was most likely the result of some infection that might have been curable two hundred years ago, if only the Age of Reason had been allowed to extend its viewpoint to the human body. If you want to blame someone for her misfortune, blame the acolytes of ignorance, superstition and horror who have surrounded medical research with all manner of prohibitions!”

Mathieu felt the pressure of the knife-point relax somewhat, and knew that he had made an impact of sorts. The seaman was no fool; whether or not he had ever heard of Pasteur and Semmelweis, he could follow the gist of the argument.

Sir Julian, on the other hand, was still pointing the gun as if he were avid to use it. The cut on his cheek was not serious, but he was exceedingly sensitive about his appearance, and he was not a man to take such an insult gracefully.

“Listen!” Mathieu said, speaking to them both. “There is, I think, a way to set Mr. Dean’s mind at rest. Let him witness the treatment for which you came here tonight, my lord. Let him see that there is nothing to fear in the mere process of drawing blood and reinserting it into the body. Let him see, at any rate, that you are not afraid, and that you trust me to work in your best interests. Then perhaps, we can all agree that there is nothing sinister going on here, let alone anything diabolical.”

Sir Julian only needed a few seconds to see the wisdom of the move, if only as a temporary delay. He had, after all, already offered, albeit in a somewhat cavalier fashion, to put his gun away in order that he and Dean might discuss matters like civilized men. “I’m agreeable to that,” he said—but he flashed a warning glance at Mathieu, as if he were afraid that the scientist might give away too much.

Thomas Dean was evidently curious. “All right,” he said. “I’ll settle for that, for now.”

4.

After a little further discussion, Sir Julian agreed to deposit his revolver on the coat-stand in the hall, while Thomas Dean placed his knife on a shelf in the laboratory. Then there was a pause while Mathieu closed and locked his front door. He took time then to inspect the cut on Sir Julian’s cheek, which he sealed as carefully as he could and dressed with gauze.

“It might open again when I replace your blood, because of the anti-clotting agent,” he said, anxiously, “but you should be able to staunch the flow without overmuch difficulty.”

“It’s only a scratch, damn it!” the baronet said. “Better a little bleeding than go without the treatment.”

The seaman watched, with evident fascination, as Mathieu sat the baronet down in the chair that had recently been occupied by Judy Lee, and carefully inserted the hollow needle into his right forearm. Sir Julian did not flinch, although it was becoming far harder to connect with his veins than it had been to get into the girl’s. From the corner of his eye, Mathieu saw the seaman bite his lip in sympathy. He switched on the pump that would assist the extraction.

Mathieu had set aside the apparatus that had circulated Judy’s blood through the filtration matrix, having already abstracted the filtrate from the matrix. The filtrate was now being maintained in solution in a few milliliters of fresh blood, held in a rotating flask dipped in lukewarm water-bath. That was necessary because the agent lost its properties if it were completely isolated from its natural environment. When Mathieu had drawn off half a liter of Sir Julian’s blood he put it in a second flask, which had already been warmed to body-temperature in the same water-bath. He detached the first flask, added the small sample of enhanced blood to the larger quantity, and then set the second flask to rotate.

“My patron’s blood-type is such that he can receive blood of any other type without an adverse reaction,” Mathieu said to Thomas Dean, “but it would not matter if there were some slight reaction, because the transfer of the agent is not dependent on compatibility. The agent does, however, require dilution before reinjection, in order that its effects may be properly generalized.”

“What effects?” Dean understandably wanted to know.

“Increased resistance to certain innate infections,” Mathieu said, employing deliberate circumlocution.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Dean protested. “How can taking blood from a sick child-whore—and I saw the girl who was brought here this afternoon, Mr. Galmier, so I know that she was sick—help increase resistance to disease in a healthy man?”

“It may seem strange,” Mathieu told him, smoothly, “but one of my former colleagues at the Institut Pasteur, Elie Metchnikoff, has demonstrated that the body has its own innate defenses against infection. The reason that Jenner’s vaccine works, we believe, is that exposure to the relatively-harmless cowpox stimulates the production of some kind of reactive agent, which is also effective against the much more dangerous smallpox. Even when the reactive agents within a human body are fighting a losing battle, they can be filtered out and concentrated, and used to arm a healthy body against the same infections that were defeating them in their original host.”

Dean was, indeed, no fool. He was able to take the argument a step further than Mathieu had assumed. “And what effect does the removal of the reactive agents have on the original hosts?” he demanded, after only a moment’s thought. “Does it not weaken them, and hasten them on heir own way to death?”

“We think not,” Mathieu was quick to say, hoping that the lie was not transparent. “Indeed, I believe that my filtration process removes infective agents as well as reactive ones, preserving exactly the same balance as before in the donor—but the infective agents are held in the filter when the reactive agents are abstracted, and I am careful to destroy them there.”

“In that case,” Dean said, “If you were to reinject the separated reactive agents back into the donor….”

“Their condition would almost certainly improve,” Mathieu agreed, making haste to get the half-truth out of his mouth, in order to return to safer argumentative ground, “and that is, of course, my long-term goal. The eventual aim of my research is to find a means of multiplying the reactive agents in isolation, so that they can then be redeployed, not merely in their original host or a single new host, but in a hundred or a thousand individuals. Given time, and sufficiently effective filters, we might not only put an end to dozens of infectious diseases, slow down the aging process and….” He paused in response to Sir Julian’s warning glare, and then finished, a trifle lamely: “and accelerate the healing process in wounds inflicted by bullets and blades.”

“I see,” the seaman said, studying Sir Julian’s face and figure carefully. “Well, your patient certainly looks well on the treatment—all the more so if he really does have the clap.”

Sir Julian scowled at that, but Mathieu moved to fill yet another Pravaz syringe from the contents of the warm flask, and made ready to reinject the baronet’s blood, hoping to distract his attention and soothe his quick temper.

“I can assure you that my patient is not suffering from syphilis or any other life-threatening disease,” Mathieu was quick to say, as he connected the syringe to the needle that was still in place and began to depress the plunger.

“That’s very good news,” said a voice from the doorway, in a pronounced Irish brogue. “Indeed, we could hardly have hoped for better.”

Mathieu, Sir Julian and Thomas Dean turned simultaneously to the man who had just stepped into the room, carrying Sir Julian’s revolver carelessly in his right hand. He was as tall as Thomas Dean, and somewhat broader. Mathieu recognized the man that Dean had earlier put to flight. He was not alone, this time; he had brought reinforcements with him.

It occurred to Mathieu, somewhat belatedly, that he had locked his front door after bidding farewell to Judy Lee, and that the “sneak-thief” from whom Thomas Dean had saved him must therefore have had some way of turning the key in the lock from the far side of the door, without making any appreciable noise, other than the click of the latch when he actually opened the door.

He guessed, too, that the man who had been watching the house in Holland Park—this man or one of his companions—had not followed him to the house at all, although he must certainly have followed him home, in spite of all his precautions.

“Never fear,” the newcomer said. “I’m no hooligan, and I’ve not the least intention of using this toy—although I confess that I’d rather have it in my hand just now than see it in someone else’s.”

“Who the hell are you?” Sir Julian demanded.

“I’m Sean Driscoll, Sir Julian, the president of your tenants’ association—or our tenants’ association, at any rate. My friends here are my deputies, Michael MacBride and Padraig Reilly. You’ve long been acquainted with Mr. Reilly’s great-uncle, I believe, although I met him for the first time myself last night, under circumstances that were admittedly awkward. We’ve been engaged in talks with your steward for some time, and have urged him as powerfully as we could, but in vain, to fetch you back to our estates so that we might include you in the negotiations. Now, we’re following the advice of whatever wise fellow it was who said that, if the mountain will not come to Mahomet, then Mahomet must go to the mountain—although I hasten to add that we’re all good Catholics.”

“Get this thing out of my arm,” Sir Julian said to Mathieu, tersely. Then, to Driscoll, he said: “What on Earth do you think you’re doing, coming after me here, of all places?”

“Well, sir,” the Irishman said, “that’s a slightly embarrassing matter—although I have to confess that we weren’t sure what sort of a welcome we’d get if we rang the bell at Holland Park, even though young Padraig here is kin to your gatekeeper. The truth is that there are all kinds of rumors running around your estate, sir, about your having made a deal with the Devil, selling your soul in exchange for eternal youth. I never believed them for an instant, of course, being a man who can read and figure as well as most, but I had to admit that I was surprised when I caught sight of you last night, for the first time in twenty years. I knew your father, you see, and I had abundant opportunities to observe you in the days when you used to favor us with our presence over the water, although I doubt that you ever noticed me. I did not mistake this gentleman for the Devil, of course, even though he’s a foreigner, but I was curious to discover what dealings you had with him. It’s a wise tenant who knows his landlord, sir—especially when he has protests to lodge and polite requests to make. I’m truly glad to find that your friend is no more than a physician, and that your unnatural good looks are purely attributable to good health—if that really is the case.”

“You’ve got a damned nerve,” Sir Julian retorted. “I think you’ll find that Irish rebels are by no means welcome on English soil, and that you’ll likely end up in jail if I call the police.”

“I’m not a rebel, sir,” Driscoll replied, equably. “I really don’t care one way or the other about Home Rule. What I do care about is justice between landlord and tenant. If I’m fairly treated, it doesn’t matter overmuch whether the land I work is owned by an Englishman, an Irishman or a Chinaman—but given that I’m not being fairly treated, in my opinion, then I feel obliged to make my position clear. You may call the police if you wish, sir—but if my guess is right, that’s not something you’re overly enthusiastic to do. This other gentleman sent me packing a little while ago, when I thought myself outnumbered again and made another tactical retreat, but if what I’ve overheard in these last few minutes is anything to go by, he has grievances of his own against you, and against your physician too. I have sisters myself, and daughters too, and I know well enough how a man’s ire can be roused when he loses one, or finds one in dire straits through no fault of her own. Would it interest you to know, by any chance, Mr. Dean, that the man sitting in front of you is fifty-nine years old, and that he looked a great deal older and far less good-looking when he was thirty-and-one than he does now.”

Mathieu could tell that Thomas Dean was, indeed, interested to hear that item of information, even though he did not know quite what to make of it.

While the seaman was still puzzling over the unexpected revelation, Driscoll handed him the revolver. “I think this had best be committed to the care of a neutral party,” he said, “while my companions and I explain our grievances to our landlord. With all due respect to the owner of all this fine apparatus, this room seems to me to be a trifle cramped and gloomy for our purposes, so I think it might be best if we and Sir Julian removed ourselves to somewhere more comfortable—perhaps a public house if, as I suspect, he does not care to invite us to his home.”

“You can get drunk wherever you please,” Sir Julian said, getting to his feet now that he was no longer unencumbered by Mathieu’s apparatus, a little unsteady on his feet but evidently determined to stand as firm as he could. “I have no intention of negotiating with you, on English or Irish soil. Any grievances you might have must be taken up with my steward. If you do not leave this house immediately, I shall certainly summon the police—and I think you’ll find them unprepared to take your word for it that you have no rebel sympathies or criminal intentions, given that you’re guilty of breaking and entering.”

Sean Driscoll’s florid face put on a fine show of feigned distress in response to this declaration, but Mathieu had the impression that the big Irishman had little or no idea what to do next. He was far from home, and must know very well that he would be in a weak position if his contest with an English baronet really did become an issue for English law to settle. Mathieu noticed, too, that there was now only one man standing behind him—although the two of them were just as capable of blocking the door, should they see fit to do so, as three. The man who had disappeared was the one who had been introduced as Michael MacBride.

“I broke nothing,” Driscoll said, mildly. “The key was in the lock, and it has too long a shaft, allowing it to be turned from the wrong side. What you need, my friend, is a strong bolt, or a sturdy bar.”

“Just a minute,” said Thomas Dean, finally. “Are you saying that Dr. Galmier really has discovered an elixir of youth? That he’s stealing the health from the blood of young girls and injecting it into his paymaster?”

“Well, now,” Driscoll said, with a slight spontaneous smile, “Dr. Galmier’s certainly not injecting it into himself, is he? Unless, that is, he’s a hundred years old instead of thirty-some.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Mathieu was quick to put in.

“Be quiet!” Sir Julian commanded him, intemperately. “That’s our business, and no one else’s. All these men are trespassing, Professor, having invaded your lodgings uninvited, whether they broke your door or not. This one has held a knife to your throat and now has a gun. Will you go to Goldhawk Road, if you please, and find a policeman. Tell him to summon help, and to come armed, prepared to meet violent resistance.”

Mathieu eyed the route to the laboratory door apprehensively, not at all sure that he would be allowed to walk out without meeting violent resistance himself. Nor was he sure that he wanted to leave his apparatus—but he knew that he could hardly round on the baronet and tell him to go in search of a policeman himself if he really wanted one to come. Instead, he opened his mouth to say that there was no need for any trouble, hopeful that he might be able to find further arguments to support that assertion, but he was interrupted by the noise of movement in the hallway. Padraig Reilly came further into the room as Michael MacBride reappeared in the doorway, in company with another person, who was definitely not a policeman.

It was direly difficult to tell, at first glance, exactly what the other person might be, given that he or she was clad in a capaciously-hooded cape which, in combination with a thick woolen scarf, hid every feature of the face within, save for the faint gleam of feverish eyes. Mathieu, however, was not in the slightest doubt that the person must be female. The hood testified to that even more clearly than her short stature. Set between the three burly Irishman she looked incredibly frail, even though the bulky cape blurred the sharp lines of her emaciated frame.

Mathieu’s heart sank, and he had a vertiginous feeling of being utterly lost. This was by no means the first time that one of his former “volunteers” had returned in search of help, having run out of other options, and they almost always returned in this part of the evening, when the cover of darkness was fully secured but before the London streets became truly hazardous for those incapable of self-defense. He never let them past his front door, though, and none had ever come when Sir Julian was present. Cormack was the only other person involved to have set eyes on one of them, and Cormack’s heart was even harder than his master’s, at least in some respects. Mathieu found himself with his mouth open, in expectation of having something to say, but quite incapable of speech.

“Girl wants to see the doctor,” MacBride reported, laconically. “Hadn’t the heart to tell her that he was busy. Best take her to another room, though, sir, if you have one.”

Mathieu felt dizzy, and feared that he was about to faint. He could not help staring at those fugitive eyes hidden in the shadows of the hood, even though he was terrified by the idea of meting their accusatory stare.

He felt a peculiar surge of relief as he realized that he did not have to do that. The gaze of the terrible eyes was not fixed on him at all but on something else—someone else.

Three seconds of awful, pregnant silence went by, while Mathieu observed strangely similar expressions of puzzlement forming on the faces of Sir Julian Templeforth and Sean Driscoll, neither of whom had begun to comprehend what was happening.

Then the girl spoke, and her voice, though inexpressibly feeble, struck Mathieu with all the impact of a bomb—because what she said was: “Tom? Is that you?”

Thomas Dean’s Caroline, Mathieu realized, was definitely not the girl who had died. Thomas Dean’s Caroline had presumably vanished from her family’s ken because she simply had not been able to bear the prospect of going home. In a way, that was good news—but in another way, it was anything but good. Thomas Dean was still holding Sir Julian’s revolver.

The seaman did not waste time with idle repetition of his sister’s querulous question. He had a more direct means of discovering whether the girl in the hood was known to him, and he only had to take one long stride reach out his arm to push back the hood.

She flinched, reflexively. She actually raised her hands in order to try to fight him off when he tried to pull down the scarf, but she could not do it.

Mathieu anticipated the general gasp of astonishment and horror a split second before it actually sounded within the room, and the anticipation made it even worse. He stepped backwards, pressing his spine against the wall in a narrow gap between two sets of shelves.

Thomas Dean’s automatic response was to exclaim: “You’re not Caroline!”

The girl made no attempt to assert her identity, and seemed to be biting her bloodless lip in anguish over the fact that she had given herself away. She tried to turn and run, but MacBride and Reilly were still blocking the door, and were too stunned to remove themselves from her path.

San Driscoll swore, softly. Sir Julian’s handsome face was uniformly white, save for the red stain on the dressing applied to his cut—which did not make it any less handsome, but somehow contrived to augment the insult.

“Caroline?” said Thomas Dean, helplessly, admitting the truth in spite of what must have seemed blatant evidence to the contrary. Then he raised the gun, and pointed it at Mathieu. “You did this,” he said, hoarsely. “You really are the Devil.”

“You don’t understand,” Mathieu protested, although it was obvious that everyone in the room understood the fundamental fact perfectly well, however incredible they had found the possibility when voicing it before. They had been no more able to believe in any kind of elixir of youth than they had been able to believe that Sir Julian Templeforth really had made a bargain with the Devil, despite Sean Driscoll’s observation regarding the remarkable transformation of the baronet’s appearance. In isolation, even given what they knew about what went on in the laboratory, that appearance had merely seemed an oddity, a strange stroke of luck. Now, juxtaposed with its counterpart, it seemed something very different, and literally diabolical.

Except, Mathieu insisted to himself, it was not diabolical at all—not literally, or even metaphorically. It was authentically hopeful: a highly significant step on the path of progress; a staging-post en route to the Age of Miracles. That was the understanding he had to convey to them—not just to the dangerous man with the revolver, but to all of them—if they would only give him time.

However dangerous he might be, however, Thomas Dean was not a stupid man. He did not squeeze the revolver’s trigger, although his stance and expression suggested that he would be perfectly prepared to do so. Instead, he said: “Reverse it! Right here, right now. Take back what you stole, and return it.”

Mathieu knew that he must have gone pale in his turn, but he knew how futile it was to protest when he stammered: “No…you don’t understand…it doesn’t work like that….” While he forced the words out, his gaze darted around the company, taking in Sir Julian and all three Irishmen before settling on Sean Driscoll’s face.

Even if Thomas Dean had been alone, Mathieu thought, the gun would have given him the means of backing up his demands, although he would probably have had to put at least one bullet into Sir Julian’s body to force his cooperation. The fact that he was not alone, though, increased his advantage vastly, in moral as well as material terms—and he was not alone in any sense of the term. The Irishmen were outraged on his behalf; thy shared his horror, if not his pain. They had no reason to love Sir Julian, and some reason, at least, to think that they might benefit in the short or long term were the baronet to be robbed of his unnatural virility, but even if they had had no advantage of their own at stake, they would still have sided with Thomas Dean and backed him up. They had never seen Caroline Dean before she had accepted Cormack’s guinea, but they had imagination enough to assure them that she might—must—have been as pretty as any young girl on the brink of puberty. It required little or no creative effort for them to exchange, in their minds’ eyes, Sir Julian’s preternatural beauty for her dismal plainness, restoring her lost purity at the expense of his.

In a single visionary flash, Mathieu saw that it really was going to happen. His four unwelcome visitors really were going to force Sir Julian back into the chair, tying him down if necessary, so as to demand that Mathieu must draw out his blood, as he had drawn Judy Lee’s that afternoon, and Caroline Dean’s some little while ago. Then they were going to force him to inject the filtered produce of Sir Julian’s blood into the girl, just as he had injected the filtered produce of Judy Lee’s blood into Sir Julian mere minutes before. And he would have no choice but to do it. They would not give him a choice. If he refused, Thomas Dean would hurt him, and keep on hurting him until he complied. They had no fear of the police now; they were obedient to what they considered to be a higher law.

But they truly did not understand the finer details of the situation. They were thinking in mystical terms; they did not understand the way that the natural world was made. They did not understand that this was science, not magic, and what the harsh implications of that distinction were.

“You don’t understand,” he said, yet again, feeling compelled to mount what defense he could. “It won’t work….” He realized even as the voiced the second phrase, though, that nothing he could say would be sufficient to persuade them. Their notion of justice outweighed mere practical considerations. Even if he did explain, and managed to persuade them of the truth, it would not stop them. It would not stop Sean Driscoll, let alone Thomas Dean. This was the kind of nightmare that could not be escaped, from which there would be no awakening—and when it was over, what then? What would become of him—and, more importantly, of progress?

5.

Strangely, given his character, Sir Julian did not put up much of a fight. The three Irishmen subdued him easily, trussed him up and secured him to the chair—after which he did not struggle, seemingly accepting his fate. The baronet seemed to see the awful logic of the situation as clearly as Mathieu did, and to feel the weight of its narrative propriety just as forcefully; he seemed resigned, at least for the moment, to the fact that his hubristic defiance of natural destiny had finally been called to account, and that Nemesis had descended upon him.

Mathieu did not make any attempt at physical resistance either. Nor did he entertain the notion of trying to cheat, by substituting some other procedure for the one they were demanding that he carry out. He was, however, determined to make every possible effort to explain—and he could see that Driscoll, at least, was as hungry for an explanation as he was to see some result. Even Thomas Dean, who desperately wanted to see a miracle performed, was man enough to want to know exactly what had been done to his sister, and how and why. In Mathieu’s estimation, too, Dean was fully entitled to know exactly how and why his passionately-desired miracle would fail to materialize.

Before he began work, Sir Julian whispered in his ear: “I have your money in my pocket, Mathieu. I’ll get you more—as much as you need. We’ll begin again, when this setback is behind us. We’ll set everything to rights. This won’t stop us.” The baronet’s voice was quivering with desperation, eager for reassurance.

Mathieu refrained from telling his patron, bluntly, that it wasn’t as simple as that. It might be best, he thought if Sir Julian continued to believe, for as long as possible, that he could be restored to his present condition once this little “setback” had been put behind them.

Before he began his general explanation, though, Mathieu instructed Michael MacBride to make a large pot of tea, and asked Sean Driscoll to send Padraig Reilly out to the night-stalls in Goldhawk Road, in search of bread, meat pies and oil for the lamps.

Thomas Dean had set his ugly sister down on a kitchen chair, positioned so that she could see every detail of what happened to Sir Julian Templeforth.

The baronet groaned as the needles were inserted into his veins, and his eyes bulged with unsuppressable horror as he watched the blood begin to flow through the filtration apparatus.

“The filter,” Mathieu said, calmly, to his uninvited guests, “is the key to the whole process. That was the one stroke of luck I had that might have been unrepeatable by another researcher. The removal of blood from the body, the prevention of its clotting and its reintroduction may seem bizarre to you, but they’ll very soon be routine procedures in medical practice. In the twentieth century, there will be nothing in the least unusual in people selling their blood for the use of others, probably for less than the guinea Miss Dean was paid. The filter, on the other hand, is truly remarkable. At first, I hoped to make use of the orthodox filters used in chemical analysis, but I soon realized that the biological agents I was trying to sieve out are extraordinarily delicate, and very easily destroyed. Some of them, it seems, can only survive in contact with living tissue. I began experimenting with filters comprised of networks of fungal hyphae, and was fortunate enough to find one that not only trapped but preserved the agent that became the focal point of my future research.

“The whole raison d’être of the Institut Pasteur is to substitute a new scientific medicine for the alchemical medicine of old, and to replace the occult version of the human microcosm with an image based on the findings of microscopy and organic chemistry. We knew at the outset, of course, that the microcosm in question would not be simple, but we had no conception of the awesome extent of the complexity that we would discover—although discover may be too strong a word, given that we have barely begun the process of exploration. John Donne once proclaimed that no man is an island, and he was correct—for every man is, in fact, not merely an island but a universe, entire and unique, which plays host to all manner of microbiological life-forms, and other agents whose nature seems to be ambiguously suspended between life and inertia. You might have heard talk of bacilli and protozoans, but we shall require a terminology far more elaborate than that to get to grips with the complexity of the multitudinous entities that dwell within a human body, the vast majority of which remain invisible to the most powerful microscopes.”

Mathieu broke off his discourse because Reilly returned with the goods he had been sent to buy. While the others set about making a frugal meal, Mathieu refilled the lamp that had gone out and lit it, bringing the room some way back from the dismal gloom that had set in. He topped up the other lamp, and turned up its flame, but the illumination the lamps provided, even at their maximum effect, had an ochreous tinge that did not make the assembled apparatus seem any less sinister.

“Thanks to Professor Pasteur,” he continued, “we now know that many, if not all, diseases are caused by micro-organisms of one sort or another. Thanks to Edward Jenner, we have begun to find ways of countering the pathological activity of those invaders, sometimes by means of other micro-organisms. The vast majority of the entities that live within us are, however, benign. It is quite possible that we could not exist without them—that the life we think of as our own is actually a collaborative enterprise, and that the processes of progressive evolution that the Chevalier de Lamarck and Charles Darwin have identified and explained are collaborative too. At any rate, our internal populations are as subject to the principle of natural selection as we are, and far more intensely, by virtue of the brief life-spans of the individuals comprising them.

“When I was at the Sorbonne I agreed with my colleagues in thinking of aging and death in terms of disease. Like them, I entertained the hope that we might one day find ways to combat the disease of aging, perhaps to find a medical elixir of life. That was why I went to the Institut. Once there, though, I began to think in somewhat different terms, wondering whether it was really accurate to imagine youth and health in terms of the mere absence of, or resistance to, agents of decay. I began to wonder whether good health and the common attributes of youthfulness might more accurately be considered as positive results of the tireless endeavor of active agents, while old age and death are merely the consequences of the eventual fatigue and failure of those collaborative indwellers.

“There was nothing unreasonable about that kind of eventual failure, I realized, in terms of the logic of Darwin’s theory. Like all living organisms, the primary imperative of our indwelling multitudes is to reproduce themselves, not merely within the context of a particular human microcosm but in terms of the further reproduction of the microcosm entire. Natural selection exerts strong pressure on our indwelling micro-organisms—especially those which, unlike disease-causing bacilli, cannot easily transmit themselves from one microcosm to another by infection or contagion—to do whatever they can to further the cause of human reproduction. Once the reproductive phase of human life is over, however, such micro-organisms would no longer be subject to pressure maintaining that aspect of their activity.”

“Is what you’re saying, sir,” Sean Driscoll put in, struggling to understand in spite of his evident incredulity, “that human youthfulness and virility are actually the product of germs resident within us?”

“No,” Mathieu said bluntly. “What I’m saying is that it is to the advantage of some of our indwelling micro-organisms to enhance or augment those aspects of youth and virility that facilitate human reproduction. I don’t claim that any of these attributes is the creation of the passengers within our personal universes, but I do claim that there are biological agents dwelling within us which assist in the amplification of our reproductive capacities. To be specific, I claim that there are separable agents dwelling within us that make a measurable, even substantial, contribution to our sexual attractiveness.”

“A bacillus of beauty!” Driscoll said, catching a glimpse of enlightenment.

“Not a bacillus, exactly, and there may be more or less at stake in physiological terms than our ready-made concept of beauty usually embraces—but yes, in simple terms, I’m referring a biological agent that promotes good looks. What I took from Miss Dean and gave to Sir Julian is not youth, per se, but the means of attractive appearance. As you observed before, I have contrived to turn an exceptionally plain man into an exceptionally handsome man.”

At that point in the argument, Mathieu thought, every eye in the room should have turned to Sir Julian, who was still outrageously handsome in spite of his pallor and the fact that he was slumped in his chair, exhausted by the extended circulation of his blood. In fact, his uninvited guests looked in another direction entirely: at Caroline Dean. Instead of wanting to appreciate the glory of his achievement, they were intent on examining its cost.

So far as Mathieu could remember, Caroline Dean had not been an exceptionally good-looking girl—certainly not as ethereally beautiful as Judy, although he seemed to remember now that she had been somewhat healthier. Cormack had obviously found the Bethnal Green flesh-market a trifle understocked that day. She had been pretty enough, in her own fashion, though. She had had something to contribute to his mission—and, in consequence, something to lose. Her face was not quite the Medusal mask that her brother had appeared to perceive, even now, but she was definitely ugly. Her cheeks and chin were slack and dull; her complexion was terrible; her hair was thin and lusterless; her lips were thin and pale; her teeth were bad. Even her eyes, which still held a certain desperate gleam, were watery and colorless. Hers was not the face of a leper or a victim of vitriolization, by any means, but it was a face that she had obviously been ashamed to show to anyone who had formerly known and loved her.

That was what the Irishmen and Thomas Dean chose to look at, now that he had confirmed and explained what they had already seen for themselves. Instead of admiring the magnificent work of scientific art that was Sir Julian Templeforth, they preferred to horrify themselves by staring at the girl—one of the many girls—who had chosen freely to trade their beauty away, at a fair market price, in order to further the cause of progress.

In time, as he had insisted so frequently to Sir Julian and all his other patients, Mathieu would be able to pay them all back—if they could only survive the ravages of disease and deprivation long enough. Once he had discovered a means of reproducing the agent in vitro, he would be in a position to banish ugliness from the world once and for all: to make every human being alive, and all those yet to be born, as beautiful as it was possible for them to be. What a gift to humankind that would be! Was there any gift more desperately desired, more desperately needed? All that he required was time….

Except, of course, that—as he had also scrupulously pointed out—the matter was not quite as simple as that.

6.

Driscoll had untied the cords binding Sir Julian Templeforth to the chair that was set beside the filtration apparatus, and had cut the string that secured his arms and legs. He was free to get up and move away, had he so wished, but he remained where he was, utterly dispirited, while Mathieu got on with his work with all due expedition.

The representatives of Sir Julian’s tenants’ association might have entered into negotiations then, while they had him at something of a disadvantage, but Driscoll made no attempt to do so. It was presumably not his sense of fairness that prevented him, but his sense of now being involved in something of an altogether different order of importance. There would, Mathieu presumed, be abundant opportunity for the other kind of business later—at least, he hoped so.

Thomas Dean was now the man who felt most urgency to talk, perhaps because the revolver had begun to weight very heavily upon his hand and he had become fearful of the possibility that he might eventually be led to fire it.

“Why him?” he said, to Mathieu, waving the weapon’s barrel vaguely in Sir Julian’s direction.

“We met, quite by chance, in Paris,” Mathieu told him. “He was there pursuing an amour—a genuine affection, not some whoring expedition. He was in love, but his feelings were not reciprocated. He had felt the burden of his plain looks for a long time, for he had a secret image of himself as a dashing cavalier, which his swordsmanship supported well enough but his face could not. He was referred to me by a mutual acquaintance who knew of my work at the Institut, with no more initial ambition than the hope that I might cure his pustulent complexion. He was a very willing subject for experimentation, and was very enthusiastic at that time to pledge his entire fortune to anyone who could make him into the kind of man he longed to be. Since he became that kind of man, alas, his attitude to his fortune and its conservation has changed somewhat.”

Mathieu observed Sean Driscoll nodding sagely, although Sir Julian was scowling.

“It seems to me,” Michael MacBride observed, “that you might have found a female employer far more generous and far more grateful. There’s no shortage of tales of women eager to bathe in the blood of virgins to renew their beauty”

“Indeed,” croaked Sir Julian. “Had he stayed in Paris, Sarah Bernhardt might have been only too pleased to employ him, even though he could do naught about her wooden leg—but you could not stay there, could you, my friend? And your career in London has not been so spotless that you could present yourself at the palace, pleading for an interview with the queen.”

“I am no murderer,” Mathieu retorted, quietly. “Those who died were victims of misfortune, and their own innate infections.”

Caroline Dean looked up at that, and stared at him as if he had leveled some terrible insult against her, but she said nothing.

“And it does not trouble you,” her brother said, in her stead, “to leech the beauty from little maids to feed some petty Anglo-Irish aristocrat with the appetites and delusions of a French dandy?”

Mathieu ignored the insult to his nationality, and thought it imprudent to point out the flagrant inaccuracy of the term “maid” in this context. “One must go to the best available source,” he said, grimly. “My hope and intention has always been to increase the natural supply a thousand- or a million-fold, and eventually to render it irrelevant, so that anyone and everyone might benefit from the knowledge and the artifice. Sir Julian was as much a means to that end as your sister was.”

“Well now,” Sean Driscoll put in, “it seems to me, on that reckoning, that Mr. Dean might be doing you a favor just now, by increasing the range of your experiments. I’m right in thinking, am I not, that the likely result of what you’ve already done is that Sir Julian will revert to his natural appearance in the course of the next few days?”

Mathieu, thinking that it was necessary to play for time as well as to be hopeful, said: “Yes, that’s correct.”

“And when you finally stop messing about with your flasks and potions, and return what you’ve stolen to my sister’s veins,” Thomas Dean added, “she’ll recover the looks she had before the Hallowmas left Tilbury last year?”

“It may not be as simple as that,” Mathieu admitted, grudgingly, “but Mr. Driscoll is correct—it’s an experiment I haven’t yet attempted.” Again, that was a lie.

“I need to go outside,” Sir Julian stated, presumably meaning that he needed to visit the privy in the back yard. He was not asking for permission—merely explaining what he intended, in case Driscoll’s men moved to stop him. No one did—but when the baronet had gone through the door Driscoll nodded to MacBride, instructing him to follow and keep Sir Julian in sight. Mathieu heard his patron go out, and then come back in a few minutes later. He judged by the consequent pattern of noises that Sir Julian had gone to the kitchen sink to wash his hands.

There was, he knew, a shaving-mirror on the kitchen wall, next to the sink. What Sir Julian would see therein in, with terror-inspired vision, Mathieu could not guess, but he felt the pressure of time upon his weary shoulders. The clock in the hall chimed twelve, each chime seeming to add a further blow to his exhaustion. He pricked up his ears, half-expecting to hear the rumble of carriage-wheels drawing up in the street outside, but there was no such noise to be heard at present. Cormack was not as strict in his punctuality when his master was not with him.

“You may sit in the chair now, Caroline,” Mathieu said, with scrupulous politeness. “I’m ready to begin the infusion.”

The girl was obviously frightened, but she was also hopeful. She had, after all, returned to the scene of his crime in the desperate hope that he might be willing and able to help her. She took her position while he intensified the flame of the Bunsen burner and carefully passed a hollow needle back and forth through the hottest part of the flame. He did not turn the burner down again, but removed it from beneath the lukewarm bath of water in which he had placed the blood-extract, setting the flame to heat up another bath of water, which would eventually serve to sterilize the more substantial items of his equipment.

He rubbed the girl’s forearm with alcohol and inserted the needle. Then he drew off a liter of blood into a flask, which he took to the bench in order that he might process it and add the filtrate from Sir Julian blood. Silence descended on the company while he worked, uninterrupted by Sir Julian’s return from the kitchen. When he set about returning the blood to Caroline Dean’s veins, every eye was upon him; he felt as if he were under inspection by a flock of vultures.

“Do not expect too much too soon,” Mathieu said, turning to look at Thomas Dean. “The extraction process is by no means one hundred per cent efficient. The gain is never entirely consistent with the loss. You may take her home now, though, and put her to bed. Given that he has that cut on his cheek, it will probably be best if Sir Julian stays here rather than returning to Holland Park, in order that I can keep him under observation. I have only the one bed, but you’re welcome to share my vigil if you wish, Mr. Driscoll.”

“Vigil be damned,” Sir Julian said, less hotly than he would probably have liked. “I’m going home—and you’re coming with me, Galmier. You’ve got what you wanted, Mr. Dean, and I’ll thank you to hand my revolver back now, if you don’t mind.”

Sir Julian stuck out his hand, as if he had every expectation of receiving the weapon—but Thomas Dean did not surrender it.

It was during this moment of hesitation that Mathieu heard the belated sound of Sir Julian’s carriage arriving to collect him. Cormack would be in the box, he knew, and there would likely be a footman behind as well as a driver. If it came to a fight now, the odds would have shifted significantly—and Sean Driscoll’s expression showed that he understood that.

Mathieu saw Sir Julian take courage from that realization, and the baronet drew himself up to his full height as he turned away from the recalcitrant Dean to meet his tenant’s eyes. The baronet opened his mouth, presumably to tell Driscoll and his companions that he would not meet with them, and that they must return to Ireland to air their grievances to his steward.

Driscoll was already opening his mouth too, presumably to protest that instruction—but neither man contrived to utter a word, because Driscoll’s eyes suddenly betrayed astonishment, and Sir Julian read that astonishment with all the alacrity that dire anxiety could induce.

Diable! Mathieu thought. One hour was all I needed. Just one hour!

Sir Julian’s face had begun to change. Sean Driscoll and everyone else could see it plainly—and the baronet, although he had no mirror, could read what was happening in their expressions.

This was not the slow and gradual transformation that overtook the girls who had sold their looks for a guinea. This was more reminiscent of a lycanthropic transformation, as brutal as it was sudden. It was not simply that Sir Julian’s complexion became dull, or his features slack; this was a tortuous transfiguration, which erased the face of an angel with a single merciless sweep and substituted the face of a demon.

Common ugliness, Mathieu knew, really was mere plainness—a purely negative phenomenon, a mere absence—but the total absence of human beauty was no mere featurelessness. When a human face became a tabula rasa, it exposed the pre-human animal: the species of beast that humankind had been before human beings and their microcosmic passengers their long collaborative evolution towards naturally-selected aesthetic perfection. Sir Julian might have been ugly, as Sean Driscoll had alleged, when he was thirty-and-one years old, but he became a great deal uglier than that, now that the vast majority of his benevolent commensals had been extracted from his personal microcosm.

Mathieu had tried to leave an adequate population of the commensals behind, although he had known full well how difficult and how pointless that would be. He was not surprised by his failure, but even he was astonished by its extent and rapidity. Human beings, according to Darwin, were close kin to gorillas and chimpanzees, but the ape that Sir Julian now became was by no means as handsome as a gorilla or a chimpanzee, and the ghastly pallor of its glabrous skin only added an extra dimension to its simian awfulness.

It occurred to Mathieu—and must have occurred to Driscoll too—that Sir Julian might have a great deal of trouble henceforth persuading anyone, including his own servants, that he really was Sir Julian Templeforth.

It was impossible to judge what thoughts might have sprung into the baronet’s mind, but the resultant action was obvious enough. He suddenly snatched the revolver from Thomas Dean’s reluctant hand, and did his best to cover everyone as he backed through the door of the laboratory and headed along the corridor—not aiming for the front door, it seemed, but for the kitchen.

Mathieu waited, holding his breath, for the scream that would accompany Sir Julian’s first sight of himself in the shaving-mirror, praying that he might hear a shot immediately afterwards as Julian proved incapable of tolerating the notion of what he had become.

There was no shot. Sir Julian Templeforth still had faith in Mathieu Galmier, and in the possibility that what had just been undone might easily be done again.

Thomas Dean, meanwhile, was staring at his sister, obviously expecting a similarly abrupt transformation that might transform her into a living angel. Nothing of the sort happened, or seemed likely to happen any time soon.

“Go!” said Mathieu, to anyone and everyone who could hear him. “For the love of God, go away! Leave me to do what I can for Sir Julian!”

No one moved to obey, but he received support from an unexpected direction when Sir Julian appeared in the doorway again, brandishing the pistol wildly, and screaming “Get out!” at anyone and everyone—except, presumably, Mathieu. The words were hardly distinguishable; clear speech was difficult for the baronet now.

Mathieu supposed that it was simply some absent-minded mechanical response that made Thomas Dean reach for the shelf where he had deposited his knife. The seaman was merely collecting his property before departing—but Dean had already thrown a scalpel at Sir Julian, and had cut him badly in the face: a wound that Sir Julian had felt as a profound insult as well as a source of pain.

Misreading Dean’s intention, the baronet fired.

The ape-man’s hand and eye were still sound, whatever had become of his voice; the shot struck Dean in the side of the head, and the sailor collapsed, struck dead—but he was a tall man, and a long-limbed one, and he did not fold up as neatly as he might have done. His convulsively-extended arms struck out in both directions, upsetting the Bunsen burner, the bath full of hot water, and one of the oil-lamps. A flood of flame gushed across the table.

What the intentions of the three Irishmen might have been, Mathieu could not be sure. Driscoll, at least, probably tried to disarm the baronet in a spirit of pure altruism. The others did the same, albeit more probably driven by an instinct of self-preservation. Whatever the truth of the matter, there was the immediate threat of a brawl. Sir Julian, no matter how ugly he might be, was strong and he was furious. He fired again, and again, Driscoll went down, and Reilly too, and neither was at all careful about the way that he sprawled as he fell. Broken glass flew everywhere, and the initial river of flame was scattered into half a dozen tributaries.

7.

Mathieu could not have said, afterwards, with his hand on his heart, that he kept his presence of mind. Indeed, he had no clear memory of exactly what he had done, let alone the intentions behind it.

What he actually did, though, was heroic, after a fashion. He made haste to seize Caroline Dean, plucking her thin frame out of the chair as if she weighed nothing at all, and ran for the door, cradling her like a babe-in-arms. Somehow, he got her through the doorway without tripping over anyone, living or dead, and without even smashing her head against the doorpost.

He went out the back way rather than the front, kicking the rickety back gate off its hinges rather than troubling to lift the latch. No one followed him.

He did not stop running until he reached the bushes in Ravenscourt Park, where he swiftly took shelter, collapsing in the leaf-litter to recover his breath.

Caroline was weeping. “Tom,” she murmured, in a grief-stricken voice. “I’ve killed Tom.” Seemingly, it had not yet occurred to her to blame anyone else for the train of events that her arrival in Mathieu’s lodgings had precipitated.

Mathieu made a rapid estimate of the amount of flammable material contained in his laboratory, and the time it would take for a fire engine to reach the burning building. MacBride, he assumed, might well have escaped through the front door, but whether he would linger to explain to anyone what had happened, and to identify the four charred bodies that would be pulled from the ruins tomorrow or the day after, was a different matter.

“For all that anyone knows,” he told the girl, “I’m probably numbered among the dead. They’ll work out easily enough that Sir Julian was there, but they’ll readily assume that he died as handsome as he went in. Whether or not they’ll be able to put names to the others might not matter at all. If only Sir Julian had handed over the money he brought, I could be back in France within three days—or Belgium, given that it might be unwise to return to Paris.”

The girl was not listening. By the not-so-distant light of a street-lamp in Paddenswick Road he could see that she was touching her face, perhaps wondering if and when it might be possible to go home again.

“Miracles only work one way, I fear,” he told her, in a sincere spirit of apology. “Destruction is easy; restitution is hard. In a fairer world, there would be a balance in these matters, but Nature’s notion of a balance is by no means egalitarian. The owl’s delight in making each of its nightly meals is poor compensation for the agony of the mouse that has to die to provide it.

“Beauty is a delicate and costly prize, my dear, or millions of years of natural selection would have made it a far more common commodity than it is. The increase in Sir Julian’s handsomeness was hard-won, requiring a kind of continual predation similar to that which sustains the owl in the ceaseless struggle for existence. It’s not just the inefficiency of the process of extraction and filtration, although much potential is certainly lost therein. The agent is alive, you see, and each unique strain, being the product of a single human microcosm, cannot help but compete against others of its kind.

“The introduction of the alien strains into Sir Julian’s microcosm was far from problematic. As you saw just a little while ago, his original native population had been gradually obliterated by the sequence of invasions, so that the removal of a substantial fraction of the warring factions that remained to him resulted in a rapid and total collapse of his internal equilibrium.

“I wish with all my heart that I could promise you that his loss will be matched by your gain, but that will not be the case, alas. Your own internal equilibrium has been disturbed, with no prospect of any but a temporary recovery. Yes, you might recover something distantly akin to your former prettiness in a few days’ time—but it will not last, and its inevitable collapse will surely leave you even worse off than you are now.

“Had I a fully-equipped laboratory, an abundance of time and a lavish supply of funds, I would be able to help you—and I would help you; make no mistake about that. I would, because it has never been any part of my intention to do any lasting harm to anyone—but the path of progress is a thorny one. Unless and until I can find a means of cultivating the agent outside the human body, and growing it in unlimited quantities, more harm than good will accrue from my research. Only think, though, what the fruits of my eventual success will be! Imagine the world when beauty can be mass-produced, when ugliness will be banished forever, when self-satisfaction will be universal!

“Imagine, if you can, what an Age of Miracles the twentieth century will be, when I have succeeded in my quest—not merely for men like Sir Julian Templeforth but even for the likes of you and me! You will have played your part in that, Caroline Dean, no matter what might happen to you tomorrow, next week or next year. You will have played your part, and all humankind will thank you.”

“Poor Tom,” the girl murmured, still bewildered and half-delirious. “You killed poor Tom.”

“Not I, child,” Mathieu assured her. “I am no murderer, nor have I ever been. I am the life of the world that is to come, the seed of the glorious future. Fortunately, given what we have just endured, I’m alive, without a scratch upon me—and while I’m alive, hope is alive too, for the future of humankind. I don’t know, at present, where my next meal is coming from, but I shall not be destitute for long. If Destiny protects anyone, it will surely protect me.”

Feeling fully recovered, Mathieu Galmier got to his feet then, and looked around the park, wondering which way he ought to go in order to find the favor of Destiny. He was not the sort of person, though, to abandon even the most accidental of acquired responsibilities.

He put out his hand so that the girl might take it, so that he might give her the continued benefit of his protection.

She took it. She had, after all, sought him out in the hope that he might be able to help her. She had not expected to find her brother in his house, and could not be grateful fact the fact that her once-beloved Tom had seen her face, as it now was. She was more than ready to accept Mathieu’s offer of succor, and to put her trust in his knowledge, his ambition and his dreams.

Besides which, the scientist thought, there was still a slim chance that she might be useful to him—at least for a fortnight or so.