In fact, Mathieu did not return to his lodgings at all, although he told himself as he walked that that was probably the wiser thing to do. But fear and curiosity were stronger than sagacity. He needed to know who had sent him the letter, and why. He needed to know exactly how many kinds of trouble he was in, and how imminent the threat was.
It was late now, but the letter had assured him that the writer would be glad to receive his visit at any time. That detail suggested a certain urgency on the part of the other, which was probably not a good sign, even though the tone of the letter had been courteous and imploring, with not the slightest hint of a threat.
Whether or not the letter had anything to do with the fact that someone had been watching Sir Julian Templeforth’s house, Mathieu had no idea, but that possibility added to the alarming quality of what had just happened. He could not believe that the lurker in the bushes had been a policeman, although he assumed that Scotland Yard had a hired rabble of petty criminals to do its dirty work just as the Parisian Sûreté had, but if he really was being followed, then he had to assume that he was in real danger.
As he walked along Holland Park Avenue in the direction of Shepherd’s Bush he followed Templeforth’s advice and kept looking behind him at intervals, but he could see no evidence of anyone dogging his footsteps. On the other hand, the rain had stopped and the street was far from deserted; there was enough of a crowd for any determined observer to remain unobtrusive. He turned off Shepherd’s Bush Green on to Rockley Road, where the Brook Green Hotel was located, approximately equidistant between Sir Julian’s house and the unassuming terraced house in a side-street off Hammersmith Grove in which his laboratory had been installed. That intermediate location now seemed ominously suggestive.
Mathieu gave his name to the clerk at the registration desk, who sent a bell-boy to announce the presence of a visitor to the mysterious individual who had sent the request for him to call.
Perhaps it’s just a patient in need of medical attention, he told himself, not for the first time—but it was a forlorn hope. He was not in practice in London, and had not advertised his medical qualifications to his neighbors.
The bell-boy returned and then escorted him up two flights of stairs and along a corridor illuminated by a single oil-lamp. The employee knocked on the door, and then abandoned Mathieu on the threshold. The door was opened by a tall young man with an athletic build. He seemed to be in his mid-twenties, about five years younger than Mathieu; his hair was black and his complexion bronzed: a southerner, Mathieu guessed.
“Do come in, Dr. Galmier,” said the hotel guest, in French, ushering Mathieu into a reception room that was more brightly illuminated than the corridor, and which seemed relatively plush by comparison with the hotel’s modest exterior.
Mathieu tried to formulate an apology for calling so late, but stumbled over the phrasing. “Not at all,” said the other, making every attempt to seem welcoming. “It’s very good of you to come. I’m Philippe de Valcoeur.”
The letter inviting Mathieu to call at the hotel had borne that unfamiliar signature, so Mathieu was not surprised to find the writer speaking French, and the distinct accent, which had a hint of Basque about it, seemed to fit his appearance perfectly.
Philippe de Valcoeur took Mathieu’s coat, hat and cane, and invited him to sit down on a sofa. As he did do so, the physician darted a rapid glance around the room. Almost everything was as he would have expected it to be in a respectable hotel but there were two small paintings on the mantelpiece that surely must have been placed there temporarily by the guests. One was a portrait, a miniature of a woman whose features could not be distinguished at the distance from which Mathieu was viewing it, but the other was like an illuminated illustration of a cross, whose intersection was covered by a red rose.
Before Mathieu could formulate a mental response to that symbol, one of the reception room’s two internal doors opened, and a young woman appeared on the threshold. She was tall and slender, with the same dark hair and amber complexion as Philippe de Valcoeur: an evident family resemblance. She was not unusually beautiful, but she certainly did not resemble a potential client for Mathieu’s as-yet-dubious wares. Her serene expression suggested contentment with herself, and with the world; she seemed to be one of those fortunate people, surprisingly rare in Mathieu’s experience, who seemed at ease in a life of relative ease.
“My sister Myrtille,” said Valcoeur, as Mathieu stood up again. “Myrtille, this is Dr. Mathieu Galmier.”
“At last,” said the young woman, coming forward and extending her hand to be shaken in the English manner. “You’re a hard man to find, Dr. Galmier.”
“I’m sorry,” Mathieu replied, although the apology seemed rather ridiculous, and the lie with which he followed it even more ridiculous. “I wasn’t aware that anyone was searching for me.”
With scrupulous politeness, however, no mention was made by the Valcoeurs of any of the people who might be looking for him, in a desultory fashion, in Paris. Gestures of invitation were made, and he resumed the seat that had already been offered to him.
“Will you take a small glass of Bordeaux?” Philippe de Valcoeur asked.
This time, Mathieu accepted the offer, less fearful of wine than he had been of the whiskey, and suspecting that he might have more need than before of something to occupy his hands.
Philippe sat down in an armchair, and his sister—who seemed to be the older of the two siblings by two or three years—took its twin.
“We would have written long ago,” Philippe said, “had we known your address, but you do not seem to have given it to any of your former friends at the Institut, including Dr. Metchnikoff.”
“You know Metchnikoff?” Mathieu parried.
“We’ve met. I’m a physician, like yourself, and I’ve visited the Institut. He’s not the one, however, who gave us details of your research. Let’s not bother with incidental details, though—it’s late and you’d doubtless like me to get to the point as quickly as possible. In sum, we know of your work, in which we have a strong interest, and we sympathize with your present situation. France, alas, has always been ingrate to its pioneers of science. If Louis XIV had not revoked the Edict of Nantes and sent all the Protestants packing, France, not England, would have led the Industrial Revolution. More recently, Napoléon III exiled Republican intellectuals, including Raspail, and nowadays the fashionable panic concerns Anarchism, again sending several of our great minds into exile.”
“I’m not an Anarchist,” Mathieu observed, warily.
“I intended no accusation,” Valcoeur said. “I was merely illustrating an unfortunate pattern. Your experiments in blood transfusion, like my own, only became possible because a ridiculous ban was recently lifted, and the lifting of the ban has not prevented the attempts at suppression from which you suffered, and which I might well suffer too were I not working a long way from Paris, in relative isolation. But France must not be allowed to cut her own throat in that fashion. A man like you, Dr. Galmier, should not be working as a fugitive in London. He ought, ideally, to be funded by the State, working in the best laboratories in Paris, but since that has become difficult, I’d like you to consider the possibility of working in the Midi, in collaboration with me. I think such a collaboration might prove very fruitful, and the location ideal. Paris has become the center of global civilization, the avant garde of progress, but Aquitaine once held a similar position, and its oldest families can trace their ancestry back to that time. There are regions that have been relatively untouched by the centuries of strife that have destroyed so much of the cultural heritage of ancient Aquitaine…including its alchemical traditions.”
“I’m no more an alchemist than an Anarchist,” Mathieu remarked, a trifle sharply. He could not help glancing at the picture on the mantelpiece, and he noticed that Myrtille de Valcoeur had observed his attention.
Philippe de Valcoeur was about to issue another reassuring assent, but his sister interrupted him, leaning forward. “But you are a modern alchemist, are you not, Dr. Galmier,” she said. “And circumstances have obliged you to conduct yourselves as the ancient alchemists were often forced to do, working covertly and furtively. Sometimes, however, those alchemists of old found powerful patrons, who supported them in their quests—for the secrets of transmutation, for spiritual enlightenment, and…”
She deliberately left the sentence dangling, perhaps in the hope that Mathieu would complete it.
He did not. He steeled himself, as he had at Templeforth’s house earlier. “I fear,” he said, “that it’s quite impossible for me to leave London at present. I have a patient…”
“Sir Julian Templeforth,” said Philippe. “We’re aware of that. We’re also aware that your treatment has been successful in his case.
Not successful enough, Mathieu thought. Appearances can be deceptive. He was beginning to suspect that the Valcoeurs not only thought that he was in search of the legendary elixir of life, but that he had found it. Did they also know, he wondered—or at least suspect—what kind of costs the production of his own less ambitious elixir required?
“The treatment isn’t concluded,” he said, aloud. “I can’t leave London at present, or in the foreseeable future, and even if I could…”
He left the sentence unfinished, feeling that they had set the rules of the game, and that he might as well use the same strategy of vague implication.
Once again, it was Philippe de Valcoeur who assumed the responsibility of picking up the thread of the conversation and directing it.
“You do not know us,” he concluded. “Well, you can research our ancestry, if you wish, in the British Museum Reading Room, if that is what concerns you, but I believe you to be a practical man who puts little store in status and reputations. More importantly, I am a graduate of the University of Toulouse, and a qualified physician, involved in research on the analysis of human blood and the possibilities of its transfusion. My sister is a scholar in her own right, albeit in more esoteric fields. My mother is a great reader, and since suffering an accident some twenty years ago that left her paralyzed from the waist down, she too has become a very assiduous scholar. My late father was a graduate of the École Normale, an engineer who played a considerable role in the south-western extension of the railway system.
“All of that is incidental, however. The point is, Dr. Galmier, that we are in a position to offer you a place in which to work infinitely more comfortable than your present lodgings, and funding for your research more generous than Sir Julian Templeforth. Our estate, including our château, is situated in a truly beautiful landscape, and although it is certainly isolated, it is not deprived of good intellectual company. I think you would find it preferable in every possible way to foggy London.”
Mathieu suspected that he might—but Philippe de Valcoeur was presumably unaware of the precise nature of the dependency that Templeforth had on his physician at present, and was probably also unaware of the exact nature of Mathieu’s dependency on his client.
“I really am sorry,” he said, “but I’m simply not free to consider other offers of support for the moment. I have a duty to my patient, and until his treatment has reached a satisfactory conclusion, I cannot leave London, fog or no fog.” His tension increased as he wondered whether his refusal might lead to a change of tone and tactics on the part of his mysterious interlocutors.
It was Myrtille who took up the thread, leaning forward and staring at him intently.
“Are you really content, Dr. Galmier,” she said, softly, “to serve the cause of Sir Julian Templeforth’s personal vanity and lust, when there are higher causes that your work might and ought to be serving?”
That was not a direction from which he had expected the attack to come. Nonplussed, he could not meet the young woman’s stare, and his gaze flickered to the mantelpiece.
“Do you know what that symbol is, Dr. Galmier?” she asked, softly.
That question, he could answer. “A Rose Cross,” he said. “There was a fictitious seventeenth-century fraternity of scholars, supposed custodians of occult wisdom, who adopted that name, but I believe that their rose was white, not red. The symbol has recently been taken over by several masonic sects in Paris, and at least one in London.”
“Indeed,” she said. “But the symbol is much older than the seventeenth century. The specific Fraternity identified by the Fama fraternitatis was, as you say, largely fictitious…but the choice of its symbolism was significant, and not inapt. It’s late, Dr. Galmier, and I fear that it would take far too long to explain now exactly what it means to us—but I am very anxious to do so. Could you come back tomorrow, perhaps, during the day or earlier in the evening, so that I can offer you that explanation, and Philippe can tell you more about his research?”
Mathieu suddenly felt a trap yawning beneath his feet. He wanted to know who had found him, and why, but he also wanted to get rid of them, if possible, as quickly and cleanly as possible. He did not want to become bogged down in an argument about “the cause of Sir Julian Templeforth’s vanity and lust,” which he surely could not win, and he certainly did not want to be ensnared by some kind of modern mystical cult.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, “but I have a very full day tomorrow.…”
“The day after, then?” Myrtille de Valcoeur’s mesmeric determination was a quieter and more effective variety than Sir Julian’s, but it was evidently just as powerful.
“There are complications…,” he began weakly.
“All the more reason, Dr. Galmier, why you might need our help and support. Whatever complications there are, I’m sure that we can help you to solve them. You’re not alone, Dr. Galmier—not any more. If you cannot leave London for the moment, then please accept our help here; but above all, please listen to what we have to say. I can assure you that it really is in your best interests.”
Mathieu could not shake off the feeling that a trap was being extended for him—but nor could he escape the feeling that it was unavoidable. And the assurance that he was not alone, that help might be available to him when he needed it most, promised soothing balm to a stinging wound…if only he could trust it.
As he hesitated, Philippe de Valcoeur stepped into the breach again. “We sympathize fully with your sense of duty to your patient, Dr. Galmier. We understand that you want to complete his course of treatment. But when that treatment is finished, we are prepared to do everything necessary to facilitate your return to France, and to smooth over any subsequent difficulties that might arise with the French authorities. When the time comes, we can arrange the transfer of any equipment and personnel that you need or want to take with you. We can board a ship in the port of London, bound for Bordeaux, as soon as you feel free to do so, but by all means take all the time you need to make a decision—and please, as my sister says, come back to see us again, so that we can explain more fully the nature of our interest in your work. We are content to remain at your disposal in the meantime.”
Mathieu continued to hesitate, uncomfortably aware of the Valcoeurs’ seeming blissful ignorance of the real difficulty—the horror, even—of his present situation. What would their reaction be, he wondered, if or when he explained the costs his work involved, and the manner in which he had accepted them?
His gaze flicked back and forth between the bother and the sister, anxiously.
“The girls in our homeland are exceedingly pretty,” Myrtille observed, almost as if it were a matter of complete indifference, a mere detail of the décor.
Mathieu felt a sudden frisson, The possibility that the Valcoeurs knew about the casualties of his endeavor, and might be horrified by them, suddenly seemed less ominous that the possibility that they did know, but did not care—and might, indeed, be just as willing as Sir Julian to supply his experiments with “raw material.”
Mathieu could not help flinching, and blushing. He knew that Myrtille had seen his reaction, but she seemed surprised, as if she had not expected to touch such sensitive nerve. Perhaps, he thought, she only knew abut the girls in Paris, and not the ones in London. But if Philippe de Valcoeur was involved in research parallel to his own, with some result, he might have encountered the same snag, and if that were the case…
“Further explanations are clearly necessary,” said Myrtille de Valcoeur, virtually echoing his own thought. “We need to understand one another fully. There will be time for explanations, while Sir Julian Templeforth’s treatment continues…but may I ask you when that treatment is likely to conclude?” She was still leaning forward, and her stare was intense, as if she were trying to read in his mind an answer that she did not expect him to spell out orally.
“I really can’t tell,” he admitted. “The treatment is experimental, and there’s no basis as yet for me to calculate a timetable. It’s possible, in fact, that it might not be concluded at all…that further treatment might be required indefinitely.”
The explicit statement seemed like a confession…a confession of a mortal sin, for which there might be no possible absolution. He thought he could read disappointment in Philippe de Valcoeur’s eyes, and decided that the brother, at least, had hoped to discover that he had made more progress than he had. Myrtille’s reaction was more difficult to evaluate, but she did not seem surprised by the possibility that Sir Julian might require continued testament permanently.
“We understand the difficulties of such projects only too well,” Philippe said, “but I repeat that if we can help in any way to bring matters to a conclusion, or at least to a point where a pause might be appropriate, we will be only too glad to help. Mother has urged us to do everything possible to bring you to Valcoeur, at least for a short visit, but if that is not practical at the moment, we shall adapt our plans accordingly. In the meantime, we can be patient.”
Mathieu was about to stand up and take his leave, but hesitated. There was too much he did not know, too much that might be cause for alarm. He glanced again at the image of the red Rose Cross on the mantelpiece. “Forgive me if I’m being presumptuous,” he said, “but I can’t help suspecting that you might be laboring under a misapprehension as to the exact nature of my discovery and my research. I fear that you might have been misled by rumor, or even by appearances, to think that I can work wonders beyond my actual compass. What I have discovered is not an elixir of longevity, or even a fountain of youth.”
“We are not under that illusion,” Myrtille assured him, flatly. “I think, when I have explained our own objectives, you will understand that we have far more in common than you imagine.”
“But on the other hand,” Philippe interjected, “how can either of us tell how far our work might eventually progress, now that we have modern equipment and modern experimental methods. Our present limitations might be temporary, and the breakthrough might come at any moment. Once the crucial obstacle is overcome, perhaps a true fount of youth or elixir of longevity will not be beyond our reach. Mother is trapped by the ideas of long tradition, but we might well be able to break free from those shackles. If we can combine our efforts, Dr. Galmier, who can tell what we might achieve?”
Mathieu had the impression that that speech had been aimed as much at Myrtille de Valcoeur as at him. He inferred that whatever traditional thought had “trapped” Madame de Valcoeur’s ideas also had a grip on her daughter’s, and that there was a degree of disharmony within the family. On the other hand, it appeared to have been the mother who had sent the children to find him, and to bring him to Valcoeur.
“My brother is an optimist,” Myrtille de Valcoeur put in, “and I admire him for it—but please don’t be intimidated. Dr. Galmier. We do not expect miracles from you. We know that yours is an honest endeavor, which showed genuine promise before you felt obliged to quit Paris, but we also know that promise of that kind sometimes flatters only to deceive, and can be frustratingly slow. The path of progress is steep and winding, and hedged with thorns, but it does lead upwards, toward the light. We would like to enable you, if possible, to walk that path in tranquility, and to favor your march as best we can. All that we ask of you—all that anyone can reasonably ask of you—is that you make what progress can presently be made, by means of your intellect and labor. We believe that it would be greatly to your advantage to work with us…with all of us.”
“That’s very generous,” Mathieu murmured, still uneasy. He groped for rational arguments to shore up his unease, but none came readily to mind.
“You need time to complete your current operations,” Philippe supplied. “We understand that, and we will gladly grant you all the time you need. But please think about what we have said, and please come back to see us as soon as possible, so that I can explain my present research, and the historical background to it, more fully, and answer the questions that you will undoubtedly have to ask. As I said, we shall remain at your disposal in London for as long as necessary.”
After that careful repetition, Philippe de Valcoeur stood up, although his sister waited until Mathieu had done likewise before standing up herself. The three of them parted in the most cordial fashion imaginable, on Mathieu’s promise that he would come to see them again when he had the chance, in order that they could discuss their mutual interests further.
As he went down the hotel stairs, Mathieu honestly could not tell whether he had just been thrown a lifeline that might save him from drowning, or whether he was being invited to jump from a sizzling frying-pan into a blazing fire—and he criticized himself bitterly for a fear that seemed entirely unworthy of him or the situation.
I’ve lost my self-confidence, he thought, and my courage has fled with it. I have to pull myself together. I’m going to need my wits about me tomorrow.
As he walked home, Mathieu lost himself in urgent thought. He dismissed as too absurd the hypothesis that the Valcoeurs might be working for the police, endeavoring to lure him back to France in order that he might be arrested. And having rejected that, why should he not take everything that they said at face value? How, in fact, could he avoid doing so, given that he could not imagine any other motive for them to lie?
One way or another, obviously, rumor of the work he had begun at the Institut, and had made no attempt to hide in its early stages, had spread far and wide. Sir Julian Templeforth was far from being the only man in the world liable to be attracted by the promise it had apparently held, and there was a certain category of women who would undoubtedly find that lure even more powerful than Templeforth. Might that include Madame de Valcoeur? But the hopes he had awakened had so far had proved more than a little treacherous, and the cost, in human terms, far higher than he had initially anticipated. Could he continue to allow potential patients to entertain those mercurial hopes? If he could solve the present problems with the maintenance of Templeforth’s condition, then yes, undoubtedly—but if he could not, and the worst came to the worst, that would be another matter entirely.
The fact that one of the London prostitutes had died was only part of the problem, although it was a part, even though he had not actually killed her or even contributed directly to the cause of her death. It was the ones who were still very much alive who were the real problem, the very image of his ironic failure. And if he continued his present program he would have to bleed at least two more…no, only two more; he had to fix his determination in that regard. If the breakthrough did not come, this time, he surely had to change direction…if he could. If he had been able to multiply the number of donors, and reduce the donation made by each individual, the side-effects could undoubtedly be reduced, but how could he possibly cast his net wider, without attracting attention?
And even if Sir Julian could be persuaded by buy prostitutes by the dozen rather than one at a time, simply reducing the side-effects on each individual would not make any contribution to solving the fundamental problem, and if the problem persisted, the dozens might become hundreds. It was all very well to think, glibly about “changing direction,” but he could not do that without first defining another direction to take. He could not simply stop Sir Julian’s treatment while he went back to basics and tried to plot another course toward the objective. Quite apart from the form that Sir Julian’s wrath might take, if his worst fears regarding the consequences of a cessation of treatment proved justified, a physician really did have a sacred duty to his patient, a duty not to abandon him, even if that meant…
But he did not want to think about that. He had turned off the Goldhawk Road some time ago, and had now reached his front door, in a street of terraced houses. Belatedly, he remembered Sir Julian’s recommendation that he keep looking behind in order to ascertain whether he was being followed. The street was deserted at this late hour, but it was also very dark. As he scanned the two rows of houses, the quantity of dark doorways and coverts where a watcher might be hiding seemed ominously numerous—but there was no sign of movement.
Again, he cursed himself for his fears. Pull yourself together, he commanded himself, sternly. This is no time for weakness.
He turned the key in the lock and went into the gloomy, lonely house, where he dared not employ a servant—especially a maidservant, no matter how ugly—and dared not even hire a laboratory assistant by the day.
He lit a small lantern, which provided an illumination more lugubrious than the one in the corridor of the Brook Green Hotel, until he had turned into the ground floor laboratory, where he lit both the readily-available lamps. He checked the blinds before turning them up, however; he did not anyone peering in, or even being surprised by a brightness in his window that seemed excessive to eyes accustomed to the vulgar nocturnal illumination of tallow candles. Even in the supposed Age of Enlightenment, in the heart of a great metropolis like London, rumors of necromancy and diabolism were far too easy to generate and spread.
After disposing of his coat, hat and cane, however, Mathieu did not go to work immediately. His ideas were too confused, still confronted by alternatives that would have to be weighed and evaluated. He knew that he ought not to allow that confusion to undermine his concentration and inhibit his work, but knowing it and achieving it were two different things.
He sat down in an armchair, and put his head in his hands—but he could not afford dejection, let alone despair. Only a few minutes later, he got up again, picked up his large magnifying-glass, and began inspecting his precious cultures, hoping, as he had hoped so many times before, that this time, the alchemical gold would not have faded away, and might instead have intensified its gleam.…