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, seemingly utterly dispirited, but perhaps only putting on a show of seeming harmless while he bided his time. In the meantime, Mathieu bandaged Caroline Deangate’s arm with all due expedition.
The representatives of Sir Julian’s tenants’ association might have entered into negotiations while they had their adversary 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 Deangate was now the man who felt most urgency to talk, perhaps because the revolver had begun to weigh very heavily upon his hand and he had become fearful of the possibility that he might eventually be led to fire it.
“Why him, of all people?” 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 offer him a chance of becoming the kind of man he had always longed to be. Since he has actually 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 rich old women ready and 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, now that she is in her forties, and Liane de Pougy would have been fighting to reach his door—but you could not stay in Paris, could you, my friend? You had provided too much fuel to rumors of vampirism and diabolism, and there were deaths that would, in time, have been laid at your door. I was a godsend then, was I not? 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, no matter how great her need for your talents might be.”
“Deaths?” queried Sean Driscolll. “What deaths?”
“I’m no murderer,” Mathieu retorted, quietly. He added an almost reflexive lie: “Those who died were victims of accidental injuries, and perhaps their own innate infections.”
Caroline Deangate looked up at that, and stared at him as if he had leveled some terrible insult against her, but she said nothing.
“But it doesn’t trouble you,” her brother said, in her stead, “to leech the beauty from innocent 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 blatant 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 of the agent 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. Deangate might have been 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 done is that Sir Julian will revert to his natural appearance in the course of the next few days…or hours?”
Mathieu, still thinking that it was necessary to play for time as well as to be hopeful, said: “Yes, that’s correct.”
“And now you’ve finally stopped messing about with your flasks and potions, and returned what you’ve stolen to my sister’s veins,” Thomas Deangate insisted, stubbornly, “she’ll recover the looks she had before the Hallowmas left Tilbury last year.”
Mathieu saw no point in repeating his cautions again. “I sincerely I hope so,” he said, “and it’s an experiment I haven’t yet attempted, so I can’t deny the possibility.” Now that the critical point had been passed, he thought, perhaps his sole concern ought to be getting out of the house in one piece, with no pursuit, in order to get to Rockley Road as soon as possible—and after that, Bordeaux. In a sense, he had no other options left…but he still had a duty to his patient.
“I need to go outside,” Sir Julian stated, 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.
While Mathieu began tidying up his materials, with the mechanical patience of a automaton, he 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 a shaving-mirror on the kitchen wall, next to the sink. Exactly what Sir Julian would see therein in, if he looked into it at all, Mathieu could not guess, but he felt the pressure of time upon his weary shoulders. The clock in the hall chimed ten, 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 very late indeed; he was by no means strict in his punctuality when his master was not actually with him, but he would have been risking disciplinary action even had the visit been a routine one. Doubtless he would have some plausible excuse, though.
“How are you feeling, Caroline,” Mathieu said, with scrupulous politeness. “You’re not feeling any ill-effects from the infusion?”
The girl was obviously still frightened, but she was also hopeful, doubtless encouraged by her brother’s seeming control of the situation. She had returned to Mathieu’s house in the hope that he might be willing and able to help her in her present distress, without actually realizing that he had been the cause of it, but she had heard enough now to understand, at least vaguely, that he had stolen her beauty somehow, and that the injection she had received might return it to her. The operation had seemed alarming to her, but the promised result…
“I feel very strange,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” her brother said. “We’ll go home to Mother now.”
“Mother?” That thought seemed to alarm her all over again. She had not been home for some time. There were things that Thomas Deangate might not know, Mathieu thought, things that she might not want him to know. On the other hand, given the somewhat fearful fashion in which Caroline was looking at her brother, there might be things that he knew only too well. “No, Tom,” she said, quietly, after a pause. “I don’t live there any more.”
“You ought to stay here a little longer,” Mathieu told her. “You too, Mr. Deangate—just to make sure that everything’s all right.” He thought abut advising Sean Driscoll to take Sir Julian away for their planned meeting, but decided against it. In any case, he presumed, Sir Julian would not consent to leave, at least until Cormack brought the carriage—the carriage that surely must have suffered an authentic accident, to be so late in arriving—and it was probably for the best that he stay, in spite of what might happen.
“Why wouldn’t everything be all right?” asked Thomas Deangate, sharply. “If anything happens to her…” He made a significant gesture with the gun.
Mathieu believed the threat, but it had all gone too far. The die was cast. Whatever was going to happen would happen. He was more worried about Sir Julian than Caroline. The effect on him might well be more rapid, and more drastic…and the consequent response more explosive. At least Tom Deangate had the gun.
Caroline was looking up at him. He knew by her expression that she remembered—not just the first extraction of her blood, but its prelude. Perhaps that ought to have made her hate or despise him, but there was no hatred in her gaze, and there did not seem to be any resentment or accusation there. In fact, her eyes seemed to be appealing to him. Perhaps, he thought, it was just automatic professional seduction—but he could not believe that. In the midst of confusion, she still trusted him. Perhaps that fact that he been attracted to her before, had been seduced by her body, actually made her expect more of him now, increasing her trust rather than decreasing it.
“It’s all right, Caroline,” he said. “I’ll look after you, as best I can. Don’t be afraid.”
She nodded, imperceptibly. Again, he wondered why she was looking to him for the reassurance she needed and not to her brother. He thought back to the moment she had recognized him, and blurted out his name. Had she been glad to see him? Not nearly as glad, he concluded, on reflection, as the seaman had been to see her—and perhaps there had been more alarm in her exclamation than any other emotion.
Mathieu turned off the gas to through whose flame he had carefully passed his hollow needle back and forth in order to sterilize them. In between times it had warmed the bath of water in which he had placed the blood-extracts, but that was redundant now. He stoked up the furnace that fed steam to the autoclave, which would eventually serve to sterilize the more substantial items of his equipment, and he paused, waiting for Sir Julian to return from the kitchen.
The baronet came back in, and cast a hostile glance around, while lending an ear to the sounds of the streets outside, doubtless cursing Cormack silently with the full range of his extensive vocabulary.
Carefully, Mathieu examined Caroline again, taking her pulse, inspecting her eyes and taking her body temperature, and trying to soothe her anxieties with the gentle pressure of his hand. Everything seemed normal. In his best bedside manner voice, he said: “I think she’s stable now, Mr. Deangate, but please don’t upset her. Take her wherever she wants to go, for now. Be patient with her, and all will be well.” For a while, he thought.
He was still holding the girl’s hand, and he felt its tension increase as he spoke. She did not want to go with her brother, he thought, but did not dare to say so.
“That’s good,” said Sean Driscoll. “Now, perhaps, we can get on to our business, Sir Julian. There’s a public house…”
Mathieu took the risk of interrupting him. “Actually, Mr. Driscoll, given that Sir Julian has that nasty cut on his cheek, it will probably be best if he stays here rather than accompanying you to a public house, or even returning to Holland Park, even when Cormack finally arrives, in order that I can keep him under observation. I have only the one bed, which I’ll gladly surrender to Sir Julian, but you’re welcome to share my vigil if you wish.”
“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. Deangate, 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 Deangate, fearful of what the baronet might do with the weapon if he took possession of it, did not surrender it.
It was during that moment of tense 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 coachman. If it came to a fight now, the odds would have shifted very significantly—and Sean Driscoll’s expression showed that he understood that.
Mathieu saw Sir Julian take manifest courage from that realization, and the baronet drew himself up to his full height as he turned away from the recalcitrant Deangate to meet his unruly tenant’s eyes.
Templeforth opened his mouth, perhaps intending to tell Driscoll and his companions that he would not meet with them now, or anywhere in England, and that they must return to Ireland to air their grievances to his steward, or perhaps merely intending to threaten to send him to Hell again.
Driscoll was already opening his mouth too, presumably to protest that anticipated 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. He also began to tremble, as if subject to a myriad of small convulsions.
Merde! Mathieu thought. One hour might have made all the difference. Just one hour more, and I might have had Sir Julian on his own. Now…
Sir Julian had to fight to stay on his feet, because he was shivering badly, perhaps suffering slight quasi-epileptic convulsions, but he managed to do it, albeit by clinging on to a workbench with both hands and holding his arms as rigid as he could; he was a strong-willed man, and he did not want to show weakness before his tenants. Had he not been gripping the bench he might have raised his hands to his face, but as things were the arching of his spine caused him to tip he head slightly backwards and expose his face fully to the light. For a full minute, he shook spasmodically from head to toe.
In the meantime, his face, racked my muscular tics and nervous shocks, had begun to change. Sean Driscoll and everyone else could see it plainly—and the baronet, although his eyes were doubtless having difficulty focusing, could read what was happening in their expressions.
This metamorphosis was not the relatively slow and gradual transformation that overtook the girls who had sold their looks for a guinea. This was more reminiscent of a lycanthropic change of form, as brutal as it was sudden. It was not simply that Sir Julian’s complexion became dull, or his features slack, or that his face acquired any of the other trivial stigmata that marked Mathieu’s young victims; this was a tortuous, twisting, quasi-epileptic transfiguration, which erased the face that was no longer quite that of an angel with a single merciless sweep, and in a matter of little more than a minute and a half, substituted a face that seemed entirely that of a demon.
Mathieu was amazed. He had feared that the transformation might be rapid, and had feared that rather than simply returning to his former plainness, Sir Julian would suffer a loss parallel to the kind of loss that his victims had suffered, but he had not expected the phenomenon to strike with such sudden violence, or to proceed to such a drastic extent. Indeed, he had never dreamed that such a drastic transformation might be possible. Clearly, the multiple transfusions of golden fluid that Sir Julian had received from different sources had brought his innate population to a state of stress, and the sudden removal of a part of his fluid had triggered a catastrophic collapse of the remainder, with truly horrible effects.
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, because of a catastrophic disruption of one or more of its populations of internal commensals, it apparently exposed the pre-human animal: the species of beast that humankind had been before human beings and their microcosmic passengers had begun their long collaborative evolution towards naturally-selected sexual attractiveness. 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 removal of so many of the benevolent passengers from his personal microcosm had precipitated a massive discordance of their internal collaboration.
Mathieu could not help the commonplace phrase “as ugly as sin” popping into his mind, and thinking that whatever sin Sir Julian Templefoth was now as ugly as must have been a mortal sin indeed: a blackness of the soul hardly imaginable, even in a man such as him.
Mathieu’s mind was racing, his thoughts crowding one another and competing for the focus of his attention. According to Charles Darwin’s bolder acolytes, he knew—and all the serious evolutionists in France—human beings were close kin to the great apes, to gorillas, orangutans and chimpanzees, but the apish creature that Sir Julian now became did not seen to him to have the majesty of a gorilla or the amicability of a chimpanzee. His features were by no means as hairy or flaccid as an orangutan’s, and he was not only still recognizably human, but still recognizable, in a weirdly suggestive fashion, as a caricature of his old unhandsome self, but the ghastly pallor of his glabrous skin only seemed to added an extra dimension to its quasi-simian horror.
It occurred to Mathieu—and must have occurred to Driscoll too—that had Sir Julian not been clad in his typical elegant costume, presumably carrying documents adequate for identification in his wallet, he might have a great deal of trouble henceforth persuading anyone, including his own servants, that he really was Sir Julian Templeforth.
The scientific element of Mathieu’s consciousness thought: What a specimen! What a subject for research! But that was not the dominant element of his character, at least for the moment.
It was presumably impossible for anyone to judge what thoughts might have sprung into the baronet’s mind, but the resultant action was obvious enough. The subhuman Sir Julian, seemingly fully recovered from his temporary epilepsy, suddenly reached out and snatched the revolver rudely from Thomas Deangate’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 might accompany Sir Julian’s first sight of himself in the shaving-mirror, almost prepared to pray that he might hear a shot immediately afterwards as the once-handsome man proved incapable of tolerating the notion of what he had become.
There was no shot. Sir Julian Templeforth, it seemed, still had faith in Mathieu Galmier, and in the possibility that what had just been undone might be repaired, with the aid of an abundant quantity of young blood.
Thomas Deangate, 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 a trifle difficult for the baronet at present.
Mathieu assumed that it was simply some absent-minded mechanical response that made Thomas Deangate reach for the shelf where he had deposited his knife. He felt certain that the seaman was merely collecting his property before departing, and surely meant no harm to anyone—but Deangate 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.
Perhaps misreading Deangate’s intention, or perhaps not caring what that intention was, in his state of horrified excitement, the baronet fired the gun.
Unimaginably ugly he might be, and hardly capable of comprehensible speech, but the baronet’s hand and eye were sound. The shot struck Deangate in the side of the head, and the sailor collapsed, his skull perforated and his brain pulverized—but he was a tall man, and a long-limbed one, and he did not fold up as neatly as he might have done. While his sister screamed, his convulsively-extended arms struck out in both directions, violently upsetting numerous items of glassware, including the bath full of lukewarm water, the furnace and the autoclave, and one of the oil-lamps. A flood of flame gushed across the table-top.
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 also moved toward him, albeit more probably driven by an instinct of self-preservation than any rational plan. Whatever the truth of the matter, there was an obvious threat of a brawl, and the threat was immediately realized.
Sir Julian, no matter what strain his lightning transformation had put on his muscles and his metabolism, was strong, and he was furious. He fired the revolver again, and again. Mathieu ducked swiftly, but he did not close his eyes, and felt like a coiled spring, ready to leap into action as soon as an opportunity to act presented itself.
Driscoll went down, and Reilly too. Understandably, neither of them 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. The cluttered laboratory began to fill with acrid, cloying smoke.