The List of Seven
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The List of Seven is a 1993 novel by Mark Frost. Though initially an occult murder mystery, the story brings in conspiracy theory, vendetta, horror, history, and Theosophy. The main character is a real historical person (albeit engaging in fictional actions) and several other historical figures appear in the story.
Mark Frost followed the book with a sequel in 1995, The Six Messiahs.
| The List of Seven | |
| Author | Mark Frost |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | QPD (1993) |
Contents |
[edit] Summary
Christmas Day 1884. Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle is invited to a seance where two people are apparently murdered. Doyle is saved by Armond Sacker, apparently a professor of Antiquities at Cambridge University. Doyle contacts Claude Leboux, a friend and Scotland Yard Inspector to investigate, but the house where the seance took place has been redecorated. Doyle gets a note from Helena Petrovna Blavatsky inviting him to a speech in Cambridge. He goes to Cambridge, unsuccessfully tries to track down Sacker, and then Doyle attends Blavatsky's talk, and speaks with her afterwards. She warns his of dark spirits and after a meal he is attacked and is rescued by "Professor Sacker" for a second time who turns out to be Jack Sparks, Special Agent to the Crown. They head to Topping to the estate of one of the attendees at the seance, but find that it has become a madhouse. They find a clue to go to a publishing house called Rathbourne & Sons in London. On the journey back to London, Jack reveals that his brother Alexander may be the mastermind behind all their troubles. Jack thinks the attacks on Doyle are prompted by a manuscript than Doyle submitted to Rathbourne & Sons. When they get to the publishing house they find a list of the board of directors - the titular “List of Seven.” A secret trapdoor leads them via an aqueduct to a storage room in the British Museum, which has had many statues stolen from it.
The next day they journey to Whitby to trace an acting troupe that may have been involved in staging the seance, there they meet Bram Stoker and an actress named Eileen, the last survivor of the doomed acting troupe. Stoker tells them that strange sights have been seen at the abandoned nunnery north of the town. They investigate, and witness an occult ceremony using the corpse of Sparks' father. Alexander Sparks confronts Doyle and Eileen and invites them to dinner, where they meet the rest of the Seven. Their plan is to take control of Prince Edward, Duke of Clarence, third in line to the throne, and use him to enslave the world by putting a demon in his future child. Doyle, Eileen and Jack fight with the Seven and with the help of a regiment of Royal Marines and Household Cavalry, they defeat the Seven.
Jack disappears to continue the hunt for Alexander who has gotten away, while Doyle is granted an audience with Queen Victoria, who offers her thanks for his help. Doyle later learns that Jack and Alexander fought and fell over the Reichenbach Falls, with neither surviving, Doyle decides to commemorate Jack by creating a character in the image of his friend - Sherlock Holmes.
[edit] Characters
[edit] Jonathan "Jack" Sparks
Jack Sparks was born in Yorkshire in 1847, his father was a diplomat to Egypt who retired so that both he and Jack's mother could participate in his upbringing. When he was 5 years old Jack discovered that he had an older brother Alexander whom he had never heard of or met. After two years of pestering his parents they finally agreed to allow Jack to met Alexander at his boarding school, but only under close supervision. When the two brothers finally met Alexander devised a way that they could secretly communication with each other by means of letters sent through proxies. Alexander appeared to be a very loving and nice brother who explained to Jack the exercises and routines by which he developed himself mentally and physically (somewhat similar to the Doc Savage Method Of Self-development).
In 1859, when Jack was 12 years old Alexander communicated with him that he had to find a way to get to Salzburg for the summer holidays so that they could meet up, to achieve this Jack practised his violin day and night until he became so good that he persuaded his parents to send him to Vienna to get some expert tutorship.
Alexander did not appear in Salzburg, but a month into Jack's visit he was called to the principal's office where he was told that his parents had been killed in a tragic house fire. When Jack returned home the priest who took his father's last confession explained that the fire was an accident, but under duress admitted the truth, that Jack's father and mother and all the servants had been murdered by Alexander. Jack's father had given the priest a letter detailing the death of Jack's older sister, Madeline Rose, at the hands of Alexander. Jack decided to spend the rest of his life tracking down Alexander, and undoing some of the evil the his brother had done. In the early 1860s Jack becomes invalided from cholera and entertained himself by reading voraciously, a habit he retained his whole lifetime.
After he left public school, Jack attended university, Cambridge - Caius and Magdalene - studying medicine and the natural sciences, and also briefly studied at Christ Church, Oxford taking Theology and amateur theatricals. He left university before graduation to continue his search for Alexander. Some time after this he performed on stage in America for 8 months as part of the Sasanoff Shakespearean Company, performing in many lead roles.
While following Alexander's trail Jack learned a great deal about mysticism and other profane knowledge. Jack also learned a lot about the use of various weapons, including the bolas. As well as his hunt for Alexander, Jack has spent his time reforming criminals, he is exceptionally skilled at disguises, He also has incredible observational and deductive skills.
In June 1884 Jack was arrested and placed in Bedlem Hospital under the orders of Sir Nigel Gull, who feared Jack's investigations were going to uncover the Seven. Jack was always kept straitjacketed, and was regularly injected with cocaine to keep him docile until he escaped after a month. He is still trying to get over the effects of the drugs through self-medication.
[edit] Arthur Conan Doyle
This story is set when Arthur Conan Doyle was just beginning his career as a writer, he is a young man (26 years old) whose medical practice is not very successful and is somewhat lacking in confidence. In the story Doyle submits a manuscript entitled "The Dark Brotherhood" which concerns a cabal of evil magicians which is too close to the truth for a certain group of individuals. Doyle has incredible observational and deductive abilities and is handy in a fight.
[edit] Larry and Barry
Larry and Barry are identical twin brothers whose mother, Louisa May, died in childbirth. Their father, a railroad man, spent a lot of time working and this resulted in Larry and Barry getting into all kinds of mischief, starting off as pickpockets and finally becoming burglars.
Since few people knew that they were twins, one brother would commit a burglary while the other brother was drawing attention to himself in a public setting (Barry would sing whereas Larry favoured the "epic recitation of the ribald lim'rick"), thus creating an alibi.
Barry got a scar which runs down the right side of his face from an encounter with a fishmonger who caught Barry trying to have relations with his daughter. The fishmonger attacked Barry with a meat clever. After this incident the brother grew breads to cover up the difference, and on their next job when Larry was robbing a house in Kensington, Jack Sparks burst in and took Larry's loot and asked him to reform. Four days later Barry was robbing a silversmith and Jack again stole their loot and asked them to reform. The brothers lay low for three weeks and finally when breaking into an antiques store in Portobello, Jack was waiting for them with a policeman, and offered them one more time to go straight or go to jail. The brothers decided to go straight, and become Jack's assistants (part of Jack's Regulars, as he calls them).
Larry talks a lot, whereas Barry is more the silent one. Larry is a better lockpick whereas Barry is better at scaling walls.
[edit] Alexander Sparks
Alexander Sparks is Jack's older brother, six years his senior. When Alexander was a child his father was still serving as a diplomat, and therefore he was the centre of his mother's world. When Alexander was five his mother had a second child, Madeline Rose, who Alexander became insanely jealous of, and killed. His mother caught a fleeting glimpse of him running away after committing the crime, which drove her slightly mad. He was sent to boarding school, and spend holidays overseas with distant relatives and only met his parents once a year over Easter weekend.
This suited Alexander a great deal, he had the opportunity to expand his sphere of influence, soon he gathered around him a loyal band of followers who undertook any of Alexander's orders without question. They were involved in animal torture, violent hazing of new schoolmates, and blood oaths.
Upon graduation, he travelled from England to Paris, then south to Marseilles, and onto Cairo. There he murdered an Englishwoman who had been his father's mistress and an Egyptian Art dealer (and his family) who was haggling to much over buying stolen art. From there he went to the Middle East seeking entry into various mystery schools.
He returned to England in 1872 where he set himself up as the kingpin of criminal activity in England, and forged an alliance with the Dark Brotherhood to enslave the world.
[edit] Bram Stoker
Bram Stoker meets the gang in Whitby, he is there investigating rumours of an incident regarding members of the Manchester Players. It is clear how the master storyteller has been influenced by the events he witnesses to write his masterpriece Dracula.
[edit] Eileen Temple
Eileen Temple is an actress who has been with the Manchester Players for the past two years. She and three other players, including her fiance, were hired for a very large sum of money to participate in a once-off performance of a seance which they were told was a practical joke. She portrayed Lady Caroline Nicholson. On the night of the performance, unexpected things happened, and her fiance was killed. A few days later the other two performers from the players were found dead, so Eileen fled to Whitby.
[edit] What is the List of Seven?
The list of seven is the list of the board of directors of Rathbourne & Sons Publishers -- who also happen to be members of the Dark Brotherhood.
- Maximilian Graves (Alexander Sparks)
- Sir Nigel Gull
- Lady Caroline Nicholson
- Professor Arminius Vamberg
- Bishop Caius Pillphrock
- John Chandros
- General Drummond
[edit] Chronology
| Year | Events |
|---|---|
| 1831 | Helena Petrovna Blavatsky is born |
| 1841 | Alexander Sparks is born |
| 1844 | Claude Leboux is born |
| 1846 | Madeline Rose Sparks is born, 53 days later she dies |
| 1847 | Jack Sparks is born; Bram Stoker is born |
| 1852 | Jack discovers he has a brother |
| 1854 | Jack meets Alexander for the first time |
| 1859 | Jack meets Alexander for the last time; Jack's parents die in a fire; Arthur Conan Doyle is born |
| 1872 | Alexander returns to London; Jack begins his career |
| 1877 | Publication of Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled |
| 1878 | Jack reforms Larry and Barry |
| 1879 | Jack begins a game of Gin Rummy with Larry that will last five years |
| 1881 | Arthur Conan Doyle serves as ship's doctor; meets Claude Leboux, a navy cutter |
| 1882 | Eileen Temple joins the Manchester Plays |
| 1884 | Jack is imprisoned in Bedlam by Sir Nigel Gull for a month |
| 1884-5 | Events of The List of Seven |
| 1885 | Jack and Alexander Sparks seemingly die at Reichenbach Falls |
| 1889 | Doyle visits Reichenbach Falls; Adolf Hitler is born. |
[edit] Jack's Headquarters
Located at 26 Montague Street, Jack's London headquarters is a Georgian townhouse full of curious items, guarded by Zeus a large dog. It is situated opposite the British Museum.
[edit] Living Room
In the main sitting room almost every inch of the walls are covered with bookshelves. Sitting at the far end of the room is a long chemistry bench covered with an array of apparatus, behind it is a very large map of London studded with a legion of red- and blue-headed pins. Jack calls this "the devil's chessboard" it records the location of various crimes around London. In one corner is a display cabinet holding a diverse collection of antique and exotic weaponry, from Stone Age daggers, to flintlocks, to ninja throwing stars. In the opposite corner there sits a stack of index cabinets with 12 drawers called "The Brain", above which is a bull's-eye target of thatched straw with the letters VR spelled out in bullet holes.
[edit] The Brain
"The Brain" is a comprehensive compendium of every known criminal in London. It consists of an index card per criminal in alphabetical order, with the following information; their age, their date and place of birth, family history, schooling and service records; recognised methods of operation, known confederates, cell mates, bed mates and habitates; physical description, aliases, arrests, convictions and time served.
Each card is encoded in an amalgam of mathematical formula, Urdu, Sanskrit, and an obscure variation of the Finno-Ulgric root language.
[edit] Dressing Room
In the dressing room there are walls lined with a vast array of costumes. A makeup table ringed with lights and sporting all kinds of makeups and brushes. A jury of featureless wooden heads wear a range of wigs and facial hair. Stacks of hatboxes, piles of boxes of catalogued accessories, and wallets with forged identities.
In the center sits a sewing machine that allows Jack to create new costumes as required.
[edit] The Window
Visible from the window is a tailor's dummy that once took a sniper's bullet for Jack.
[edit] Jack's Oath
Jack asks Doyle to take the following oath:
| “ |
From the point of Light within the Mind of God, |
” |
[edit] Allusions to Literary Works
[edit] Allusions to Sherlock Holmes
Because the premise of the novel is that Doyle was inspired by what happened to him to write his successful works, there are strong parallels between many characters and events in the novel and Doyle’s works:
- Jack Sparks is a model for Sherlock Holmes: ascetic, aloof, mentally and physically extraordinary, a violinist. Sparks is also addicted to cocaine, although Holmes indulges in his habit for recreation, while Sparks is ashamed of his addiction.
- On the train to Whitby Sparks also uses a magnifying glass, smokes a pipe and play strange music on his violin, characteristics similar to Sherlock Holmes.
- Alexander Sparks is a model for Holmes’ arch-nemesis, James Moriarty, a criminal mastermind at the centre of all the London underworld's plans.
- The scene described by Larry when Jack and Alexander go over the Reichenbach Falls together is quoted from Doyle’s short stories “The Final Problem” and “The Mystery of the Empty House” where Holmes and Moriarty die in the same manner, with Lady Caroline Nicholson, acting as a sniper, taking the place of Colonel Sebastian Moran.
- Inspector Leboux can be seen as a role model for Inspector Lestrade (and also to a less extent Inspector Gregson), a good solid, unimaginative Scotland Yard Inspector.
- Jack's Headquarters have allusions to a range of Holmes stories, the V:R on the wall (The Musgrave Ritual), "The Brain" can be seen as a model for Holmes' "index of biographies" (The Adventure of the Empty House), the tailor's dummy is from "The Adventure of the Empty House" and Zeus is described similarly to "The Hound of the Baskervilles". Additionally the chemical bench is seen in any number of Holmes' stories and Jack's dressing room is Holmes' bedroom with the various maekups and diguises.
- Jack's Regulars (who are made up mostly of criminals but with a few civilians) can be seen as a grown-up version of Holmes' Irregulars.
- Professor Armond Sacker's name is based on the original name for Watson: Ormond Sacker.
- Rathbourne & Sons might be a slight reference to Basil Rathbone who famously portrayed Holmes.
[edit] Allusions to Dracula
- In the company of Bram Stoker, Larry and Barry recount a story they heard in a Whitby pub, about how the Seven’s ship beached in the middle of the night, and its crew seemed to unload coffins, and the witness was found dead the next day, mauled by a wolf. This is reminiscent of how Count Dracula arrives in England in Stoker’s novel.
- Elements of Alexander Sparks character can also be seen as a model for Dracula; Dresses all in black, a hypnotic presence, and appears over sleeping ladies' beds all the time.
[edit] Allusions to real life history, events, or people
Several historical persons appear as characters:
- Arthur Conan Doyle is the main protagnist of the story
- Bram Stoker appears in the latter half of the story to provide useful information
- Queen Victoria appears at the end of the story to thank Doyle
- Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence appears as a deranged fool in the story.
- Adolf Hitler appears as a baby in the epilogue of the story
- Sir Nigel Gull appears to be a direct parallel to Sir William Gull, also a physician to the Royal Family, and popularly rumoured in history as a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders.
- Professor Arminius Vamberg is a reference to Arminius Vambery, a Hungarian scholar who is thought to have been one of Bram Stoker's sources when he wrote Dracula.
[edit] Plot in Detail
The story starts on Christmas Day 1884. Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle receives a mysterious letter asking for his help in unmasking a fraudulent psychic at a parlour seance at 13 Cheshire Street in London. Doyle, a Scotsman of Irish descent, is a physician and amateur writer who has, thus far, failed to find publication. Doyle is also an agnostic, who has renounced the strict faith of his family, and yet yearns to reconcile his spiritual upbringing with his rational outlook. He yearns to experience a genuine spiritual event, but in the meantime his researches have led to some minor notoriety as a debunker. This is presumably why the letter writer has sought him out.
At the seance, Doyle meets Lady Caroline Nicholson and her brother, who are seeking information on the disappearance of Lady Caroline's son William. During the seance, Doyle attempts to unmask the medium, believing that he is watching a fraud. The medium's malign spirit guide mocks Doyle, saying, "You imagine that you do good. See now what your good has wrought!" A gang of thugs emerge from the shadows and kill the other attendees, including Lady Caroline. Doyle is saved by the sudden appearance of an athletic gentleman who introduces himself as Armond Sacker, Professor of Antiquities at Cambridge University. Sacker warns Doyle that his latest manuscript, “The Dark Brotherhood,” has been intercepted by an actual cabal of evil magicians, who believe he has been spying on them. Doyle is flabbergasted, since he admits that the novel was a potboiler, and moreover that he lifted most of the material for the story from the works of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a Theosophist. Sacker gives Doyle an Eye of Horus amulet and departs.
Doyle returns to his flat, briefly meets his neighbor Mrs. Petrovich, and contacts Claude Leboux, a Scotland Yard Inspector who is unimaginative, but thorough. Leboux and Doyle investigate the site of the seance, but the room has been completely refurbished, and the only evidence that they can find is dried blood wedged between some floorboards. Wondering at Doyle's story, Leboux shows him the body of a murdered prostitute named Fairy Fay. Doyle's first thought, after his horror, is “This is the work of a doctor.” Returning home, Doyle finds Petrovich dead in her flat, and his own in a curiously altered state, as though everything inside has been melted slightly. She has a note from Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, her friend, inviting him to a speech in Cambridge. Seeking information from Sacker, Doyle travels to Cambridge. On the way, he thinks he is being followed by a high-caste Indian woman. Upon arrival, Doyle goes looking for Sacker, but is followed by something. He suspects that his enemies have somehow animated the gothic gargoyles of the college, but there is a far more worrying prospect – his pursuers are affecting his mind, making him hear things.
Doyle attends Blavatsky's talk, and speaks with her afterwards. She confirms that the Dark Brotherhood, whom she calls “the enemies of the Holy Spirit', are following him. However, it is a precarious time for many initiates into the mysteries and she is needed elsewhere. But Doyle seems to have received an ally of sorts in Sacker - especially since the real Professor Sacker is ninety, and hard of hearing.
Doyle goes into an inn for a meal, but he is attacked by the hooded thugs from the seance. However, he is saved by the Indian woman from the train, who is revealed as 'Sacker' in disguise, who promptly introduces himself as Jack Sparks, Special Agent to the Crown. Fleeing their attackers, Doyle and Sparks walk out of Cambridge on an old Roman road. On their journey, they impress one another with their deductive abilities. With the help of Sparks' assistants, twin brothers and former burglars Larry and Barry, they decide to go to the Nicholson's ancestral seat in Surrey, a mansion named Topping. However, Topping is surrounded by a high wall, the grounds are in disarray with wreckage strewn around, the floors are covered in salt, and the only two people in the house are Ruskin the butler and Charles Nicholson, Lady Caroline's husband. When confronted by Sparks, Nicholson reverts to childishness, telling them that he is afraid of his wife because she 'consorts with Satan', making references to his missing son and 'trains'.
Suddenly, their attackers come up the lawn. Now, the hooded thugs are being led by a man in black. Escaping from the attackers on a train they find in a cavern connected to the house, they return to London on the train just in time for New Year's Eve. There, Sparks tells the story of his older brother Alexander, a child prodigy who killed his younger sister and has since become a master of assassination, an expert at mysticism, and the unquestioned master of the London underworld. In a fit of jealousy, the elder brother killed his parents to prove that he had grown beyond them. Jack, who had idolised his brother, was initially horrified and tried to track down his brother, before ultimately deciding to become a doer of good to balance his brother's evil.
Doyle, due to his knowledge of the London spiritualist community, decides to track down the medium from the seance. None of the professional mediums he contacts can tell him anything, but admit to sensing a dark force in the Ether recently. A sensitive named Spivey Quince tells him to watch for a bald boy in blue, who will tell them about 'the throne'.
Sparks has tracked Doyle's manuscript to a publishing house called Rathbourne & Sons. Upon breaking into the publishers, the group finds a list of the board of directors - the titular “List of Seven.” Jack has already mentioned one of them, Major General Marcus Drummond, to whom Lord Nicholson sold a large parcel of land near Whitby. The chief director's office is unused, but a secret trapdoor leads them into a Roman aqueduct where they find a large statue of the Egyptian god Tuamutef. They are followed by a squad of reanimated mummies, who chase them into a sub-basement of the British Museum, where they discover that a large portion of the sub-basement's collections have been systematically looted by the villains. They escape using an antique cannon. A police investigation finds no evidence against them, but neither does it find the aqueduct or implicate Rathbourne & Sons. Doyle contacts Leboux to see how the investigation is progressing. The blood from the floorboards is revealed as pig's blood, and Arthur's flat was burned down the night he left for Cambridge. Doyle attempts to tell Leboux about the Sparks brothers, but is struck by how little he knows about them. Leboux promises to leave a note for him at a certain London hospital.
The next day, Sparks tells them about information he received from a renowned member of the acting community. It concerns a group of actors who were commissioned to play a single performance in a London home; now, all but one of them have died. Doyle visits the hospital, where he finds a note from Leboux, saying that Jack Sparks is an escaped mental patient. Doyle is plunged into a nightmare of doubt, wondering whether Sparks has been making up the whole story, or worse, whether Jack himself is the mad criminal “Alexander.” Before they leave the hospital, they encounter an epileptic boy having a fit. When Doyle and Sparks intervene, the boy shows psychic powers, telling the pair about a dark being seeking 'rebirth into physical life'. He tells them, "It seeks the throne. It will be king... king a thousand years." He identifies Sparks as an arhanta, and promptly dies. The police, including Leboux, chase the pair for their perceived role in the boy's death. Doyle goes with Sparks despite his doubts.
His doubts worsen on the journey to Whitby, when he asks Barry if he or Larry have ever actually seen Alexander. Barry says Jack has never mentioned such a man, but “Alexander” is Jack’s middle name. Lying awake one night while Jack thinks he is asleep, Doyle watches Jack inject himself with a drug, as an addict would.
Sparks' information leads them to Whitby, where a stage manager named Bram Stoker has tracked down a woman named Eileen, the last survivor of the doomed acting troupe. Doyle is shocked to recognize her as “Lady Caroline Nicholson” from the séance at 13 Chesire Street. Eileen tells them that her troupe was discreetly hired for a private performance that was meant to be a practical joke on Doyle. Sparks theorizes that it was actually a ruse to capture Doyle, find out how much he really knew about the Seven, and then kill him. The “murders” of Eileen and the other performers were staged, but later the other members were murdered for real.
Stoker tells them that strange sights have been seen at the abandoned nunnery north of the town. Since Whitby is in the bishopric of Bishop Pillphrock, one of the Seven, they decide to investigate. That night, they go to the nunnery, where they fight wolves and ghostly Satanic nuns. Afterwards, they find the corpse of Sparks' father, which was used in an occult ceremony. A horde of slow-moving men come at them, and Larry and Barry agree to stay and hold them off. Jack, Doyle, and Eileen escape by using a coffin lid as an impromptu toboggan.
Back in the town, the pressure of the night leads Eileen and Doyle to bed one another. Emerging from their room, Doyle is confronted by Alexander Sparks, who invites him and Eileen to dinner with him. Doyle is struck at once by both Alexander's intelligence, and his pride, which blinds him to Doyle's own intelligence. On the carriage-ride, Alexander presents himself as merely a businessman with prosperous friends and a mad brother. His story fits in disturbingly well with Leboux’s information and the drug-injecting scene. However, Doyle tests Alexander by engaging him in a hypothetical about “Jack’s” paranoia, leading Alexander to inadvertently confess that he killed his sister. Doyle vows never to doubt Jack again.
Alexander is one of the Seven, under the alias “Maximilian Graves” (a pun on “Makes a Million Graves”). Once they arrive, Doyle is introduced to the other six: John Chandros, a prosperous businessman who scorns Christianity as being a religion whose first commandment is “put on a good show”; General Drummond, heir to an enormous arms manufacturing conglomerate spanning both Britain and Germany; Professor Arminius Vamberg, a well-traveled doctor deeply interested in spiritualism and the occult; Bishop Caius Pillphrock, who believes more in leprechauns and other natural spirits than he does in God; Sir Nigel Gull, sometime physician to the Royal Family; and the real Lady Caroline Nicholson, very much alive.
Chandros says he is a firm believer in progress, and the modern world requires something new to help man overcome his animal instincts and achieve his full potential. He shows Doyle the Seven’s solution – namely, to turn convicts into mindless slaves using chemicals and crude surgery. Doyle is shocked, but pretends interest. That night at dinner, Doyle and Eileen meet the Seven's other guest: Prince Edward, Duke of Clarence, third in line to the throne and developmentally challenged (due to inbreeding among Europe's royals). Doyle suddenly realizes the boy's raving about 'the throne' must involve some grim future for Prince Eddy. The Seven treat Doyle and Eileen to a grand meal, over which they tell the group's story - how it began as a rough assemblage of occultists, before Alexander and Professor Vamberg gave the group their dark information and led them to contact the 'devas' or nature spirits. The spirits bargained that in exchange for the Seven's help in incarnating the deva's king, a font of profane knowledge would be opened to them from nature. The knowledge is quite useful - the dinner includes cabbages too big to be lifted by one man. Vamberg also tells how a combination of surgery and drugs, which he learned the use of in the Caribbean, can turn a man into a willing automaton. To Doyle’s concealed horror, one of the servants serving the dinner is Barry, who has been forcibly operated on. He will never think or laugh again.
Doyle prepares a story – that he gave his manuscript to the Seven's publishing house purely to get their attention and convince them to let him help. They agree, on the proviso that he kills Eileen. At this, Eileen and Doyle attack the group, killing Chandros and Pillphrock, and possibly Vamberg, but Alexander and Lady Caroline escape. Jack appears, having entered the house disguised as a servant, and joins in the fight. On the way out, they discover why Topping's floor was covered in salt – the Seven have used their abilities to grow oversized leeches. Larry joins them in their flight. They enter a “biscuit factory” adjacent to the mansion and instead find a gigantic armaments plant. They free Barry from among the brain-dead workers there, and blow up the factory. A regiment of Royal Marines and Household Cavalry arrives to deal with the remaining inhabitants of the mansion.
On the trip back to London, Barry manages to croak out a plea to end his life. Larry understands, and chokes him to death. He tells Doyle that Barry told him to run while Barry held off their attackers. Larry refused, but Barry said he was the older brother (by three minutes) and Larry had to obey him. Larry thanks Doyle for killing the men who did this to his brother. Doyle and Sparks puzzle out the group's motives, based on Doyle's knowledge of Blavatsky's work. They sketch out the Seven’s plan, a curious mixture of the occult and the prosaic: the Deva King, described in Blavatsky’s book as “The Dweller on the Threshold,” wanted to take human form on earth in order to rule it, and had done so at least once before. Originally, the Seven planned to use Lady Caroline’s son as the receptacle, but the boy was too weak to contain the spirit, and died. Instead, the Seven planned to find who the King's previous incarnation was, and could use the corpse to reincarnate him as a baby. Lady Caroline would then marry Prince Edward and produce the child as theirs, to eventually inherit the throne of England. Upon reaching adulthood, the Seven would enlighten him as to his arcane heritage, and then he would go forth, with an army of slaves, and weapons, to conquer the world and rule for a thousand years.
When Doyle asks how much of the plan was true or could have been expected to work, Sparks replies that only so much can be guessed about the motives of madmen. Sparks explains Leboux’s note: while investigating Sir Nigel Gull, he was committed to a mental asylum on Gull’s orders, and escaped when they tried to implicate him in a crime. He also confesses that in the asylum the doctors forcibly addicted him to cocaine, which he has, to his shame, not yet overcome. Doyle apologizes and falls asleep.
When he wakes the next morning, Sparks, Larry and Eileen are gone, and he has been left enough money to restart his medical practice. Eileen sends him a letter, confessing that she was already engaged to another man when she met Doyle, though Doyle is the one she truly loves. At a bit of a loose end, Doyle receives an audience with Queen Victoria, who offers her thanks for his help, congratulates him for his gifts, and demands his silence on the matter. She also gives him a fountain pen.
Doyle becomes a wanderer, until Larry meets him one night in London. He tells him that he and Sparks tracked Alexander and Lady Caroline back to Whitby, where they took a mysterious corpse to Austria. Desperate to bring their master into the world, they performed their rituals in the town of Braunau am Inn. When Sparks and Larry caught up with them, Jack and Alexander fought and fell over the Reichenbach Falls, with neither surviving. Doyle and Larry both mourn their friend. However, no bodies were found, and Lady Caroline escaped. Doyle constructs a career for himself as a country doctor, where he meets his wife, Louise, and broods on the death of Sparks. Eventually, on the suggestion of his wife, Doyle uses Queen Victoria's pen to write a story about his mysterious friend.
In an epilogue dated 1890, Doyle, his wife and his little daughter go on holiday at Reichenbach Falls. No man has ever survived the falls, he is told. But at the Falls, his wife and child meet a young Austrian family with a baby boy. A baby boy with mesmeric eyes. A baby boy from Braunau am Inn. A baby boy named Adolf...
[edit] See also
- The Six Messiahs by Mark Frost
- The Arcanum by Thomas Wheeler
