Part 2 (1/2)

Colleen stared at him.

”There are stories from the fourteenth century,” he said, ”about a book that would drive mad anyone who read it. The book was finally burned and the ashes scattered. There have been other stories. I think your uncle found something like that. Something that was more than the human psyche can bear. The cult knew he was beyond reach then. That's why they killed him.”

”Killed him?” Colleen looked at Carter sharply. ”I thought he committed suicide.”

”There are many ways to kill a man, Miss Garman. In your uncle's case, smuggling a razor into his cell was enough. He did the rest.”

She stared at him, aghast. ”Are you sure?”

Carter shrugged. ”No. But a madman wouldn't be issued a razor. He had to get it somehow.”

Colleen closed her eyes, willing away the images that filled her mind.

”Can we talk about your uncle now?” Carter asked, his voice gentle.

Colleen opened her eyes. ”Not quite. You haven't told me who you are yet.”

Carter sighed. ”I was hoping to avoid that. Miss Garman, I'm going to have to ask you to give your word that you'll keep the information I'm about to give you completely confidential.”

Colleen nodded.

”I'm part of a team composed of members of the Bureau of Investigations in the United States. We report directly to President Harding. If the general public found out about this cult and their mad G.o.ds, there would either be widespread ridicule of our efforts, or widespread panic. So we operate in secrecy.

”Last year, the president contacted your Prime Minister Meighen to discuss the creation of a Canadian force to deal with cult activities on this side of the border. Mr. Smith here is our Canadian liaison.”

Smith nodded.

”The rest of the team is on their way from Was.h.i.+ngton,” Carter continued. ”We expect them on the evening ferry.”

A worldwide cult of religious fanatics? It seemed too fantastical to believe. Colleen fingered the cut in her sleeve, and thought of her gentle uncle taking an axe and attacking a school. There was no mundane explanation for what was happening. She might as well accept that it was true.

”So tell me about your uncle,” Carter said.

Colleen shrugged. ”I don't think I know anything that will help. I hadn't heard from him in years. I went to his house, but it was a shambles. I have no idea if anything was missing. It was a disaster area.”

The men went silent, and Colleen replayed her visit to the house in her mind. Nothing there had reminded her of Uncle Rod. There were none of the things she a.s.sociated with him. No ancient relics, no maps, no souvenirs of his travels. No tools, either.

”Where were his tools?” she said. The men looked at her. ”For that matter, where did he work?”

Carter's eyebrows rose. ”I'm not sure your uncle was employed.”

”Uncle Rod wouldn't have a regular job. That was never his style. He might have repaired things, designed things, to make money. He was very good with his hands. A natural born engineer, my dad called him. But that house was tiny. There was no place to work.”

Carter said, ”Are you sure he-”

”The last time I saw him,” Colleen interrupted, ”he was drawing up plans for a flying machine with a propeller on the top, lifting it up. The time before that, he gave me a brooch he made from bra.s.s gears and silver wire. He was always tinkering. Always. He must have had a workshop. I guarantee it.”

Smith and Carter exchanged glances. ”This is excellent,” Carter said. ”The cult may not know about the workshop. Perhaps we can get a jump on them. If we can find it.”

They spent most of the day on the telephone, and hit paydirt in mid-afternoon. After dozens of calls to every place of business they could think of that used complex machinery, they reached a John Roebuck who ran a tailor shop with half a dozen sewing machines powered by a central spindle. He'd hired Rod to repair the equipment, and he'd picked up the parts at Rod's workshop. He gave them an address.

They caught a taxi in front of the hotel, Carter declaring that the convertible was too conspicuous. The taxi took them to the outskirts of Victoria, where they found a run-down warehouse at the end of a dirt road. Carter asked the taxi driver to wait, and they walked forward to investigate.

The warehouse was ivy-covered brick, the windows filthy, rust streaking the brick under the window frames. There was a door for trucks, padlocked shut, and a man door, standing ajar. Smith drew his pistol as the three of them approached.

Carter yanked the door open, Smith sprang inside, and the taxi driver, clearly alarmed, drove away. Carter watched him leave with a shrug.

”It's clear,” Smith said, and they followed him inside. The interior was gloomy, poor light trickling in through the grimy windows. A large boiler filled the s.p.a.ce before them. Ancient, rusted machinery, wreathed in cobwebs, lined the walls. They moved around the boiler and looked into the rest of the warehouse.

Colleen immediately felt at home. Long benches lined one wall, dozens of tools racked above them. There was a treasure trove of machinery, metal lathes and drill presses and punches. She saw gears of every size, and bra.s.s and steel stock waiting to be made into parts or tools.

Machines littered the floor, in various states of repair or disa.s.sembly. She saw automobile engines, a was.h.i.+ng machine, and something designed for stamping metal. It was all dirtier and messier than her father's workshop had ever been, but somehow delightful. Colleen gazed around the room and felt as if she had finally found something of Uncle Rod.

A cot in one corner showed that he sometimes slept here. That was where they began their search. There were few personal possessions, just dishes and a change of clothes. They expanded their search outward, examining every piece of equipment, every tool, every cabinet.

It was Carter who made the discovery. ”Uh oh,” he said, and Colleen turned to find him kneeling in front of the wood stove by Uncle Rod's cot. He had the front door of the stove open, and he brought out a charred strip of leather. ”The good news is, it looks like he found a book. The bad news is, he burned it.”

”Maybe it's for the best,” Smith muttered, but he joined them at the stove. Carter lifted burned chunks of wood from the stove, setting them on the floor. Then he took a deep breath, reached in, and brought out a thick sheaf of blackened paper.

Most of the book had been destroyed, but a little bit remained. The back cover, blackened and bubbled, was essentially intact. On top were sheets of fire-damaged paper. Carter did his best to lift the top sheets, but they crumbled to ash at his touch. Undiscouraged, he kept going, delicately lifting away layers of ash, working his way deeper.

There were partial remains of perhaps a dozen sheets of paper. The top sheets were mostly gone, just a few words of Latin still legible on the fire-darkened paper. Smith drew a notebook from his black coat and took careful notes.

As Carter worked his way deeper the legible parts of the pages grew larger. Finally he came to the last page.

”This one's different,” he said. I don't think it's part of the book. I think someone tucked this into the back.”

”What is it?” Colleen asked.

”I'm not sure.” The paper was badly fire-damaged. Nearly half of it was gone, and the rest was blackened, with large sections completely eradicated. The top of the page contained some sort of diagram, with curving lines in a pattern that meant nothing to any of them.

The bottom of the page held text, most of it gone. Carter drew a pair of spectacles from his pocket and peered at the sheet. ”Tana,” he said. ”I can't make out the next letter. But it starts with T-A-N-A.” He shook his head. ”I suppose it could be anything.”

It was a long walk back into the city. Eventually they reached downtown, and took a table at a small cafe. Colleen felt drained and spent. The three of them drank coffee and discussed what they'd found, making no progress.

”You should ask Jane what she knows,” Colleen said. The men looked at her blankly.

”Jane,” she repeated. ”Uncle Rod's friend? You didn't know about her? That reminds me, she's coming by my hotel this evening. What time is it?”

It was nearly seven. They paid the bill and walked to the Queen Anne. There was no sign of Jane, and no message.

There was a knot of worry in Colleen's stomach as she asked at the front desk for directions to Mrs. Rosebottom's boarding house. The three of them walked through the darkening streets, grim and silent.

The knot of worry bloomed into cold, sharp fear when they saw a crowd of people gathered in front of the boarding house.

The crowd was a mixture of policemen and rubberneckers. Colleen, Smith, and Carter stayed on the fringe of the crowd, avoiding the police and picking up gossip. A woman had been attacked, less than an hour earlier, as she came up the steps of the boarding house. Several men had dragged her into a sedan and raced away.

When they had learned what little there was to know, the three of them returned to room 304 of the Empress Hotel. There they held a grim council.

”Well, that's too bad,” Carter said. ”Poor woman.”