Stephen Gallagher - The Bedlam Detective

“As well as drugging me with wine, you fed me worms?”

“Now you’re making me sound like a bad host.”

Sebastian put his hand to his mouth. It was a quick gesture, and it caused Sir Owain to move back a little with the pistol, to be sure of staying out of his reach.

“I can tell you there’s no point in trying to vomit up the active ingredient,” Sir Owain said. “It’s been several hours since the meal. Whatever reaction you’re feeling now is only the beginning.”

“I don’t feel anything.”

“I don’t think that’s quite true. Is it? Your skin is sallow. Your limbs are heavy. Your energy is sapped. You want to run but you can barely rise. I want you to think about it, and tell me. How does the light feel to you? What do I sound like?”

“I’m not playing your stupid game,” Sebastian said. “You’ve poisoned me.”

“Look,” Sir Owain said reasonably. “I admit that I made a mistake and killed my doctor. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing now. I’m guiding you along a path that I’ve followed myself. Only with you I can make reliable observations, whereas before I could only interpret my own suffering.

“Shall I tell you what I felt at this stage? I felt as if I was on the threshold of another world of possibilities. One where there’s a blurring of the line between what we know to be true and what we wish or fear to be true. I sensed the existence of a world of unseen marvels. But when that faded, it left me with the permanent feeling that I could not trust my own world anymore. I see so many things that I cannot believe are there.”

Now he leaned forward.

“If you begin to see the world I see,” he said, “I’ll take that as a strong indication that it has some objective reality. I mourn the loss of your wife. But I can’t deny that it enhances the conditions for my observations.”

Sebastian said, “I’m not your experiment!”

“I’m sorry to hear you say that, Mister Becker,” Sir Owain said. “Because I’m afraid that’s exactly what you are.”

Elsewhere in the house, not too far away, there was a sound of banging.

“There’s someone at the door,” Sir Owain observed. “We get very few visitors here. Can I trust you to stay quiet while I deal with them? No, it isn’t fair to ask you. Of course I can’t.”

He got up from the chair and moved toward the medical bag. As soon as Sir Owain turned away, Sebastian launched himself from the couch, only to find that his confidence in a fast recuperation was misplaced. As the narcotic effect of the wine had worn off, the hallucinogen from the grubs had begun to increase its effect.

His legs might support him now, but his balance was unreliable. He got as far as the door and collided painfully with the jamb. He bounced out onto the landing, where he fell and hit the carpet hard.

The long gallery was to his left. The stairs were to his right. The hallway and the main door were down below. He tried to crawl toward the stairs, but the unsecured rug bunched up underneath him and he did little more than swim in place.

Sir Owain came out and knelt beside him.

“I learned another little trick from the Indians,” Sir Owain said. “They put this on their arrows.” Sebastian felt a sharp jab in the side of his neck, and then Sir Owain left him and went to descend the stairs. One hand held the pistol behind his back. He let something fall from the other as he walked away; it was a lancet, almost certainly the cause of that momentary pain. As he went down the stairs he dropped from Sebastian’s floor-level view like a ship over the horizon.

This was a piece of luck. Sebastian hadn’t expected Stephen Reed to come looking for him so soon. The gun in Sir Owain’s hand could pose a problem. He had to get to the rail and shout a warning. He could do that much.

Except that he couldn’t. The latest addition to his bloodstream cocktail was already having its effect. A sudden paralysis was taking possession of his body, like a fast-spreading blight.

His senses were unaffected. Enhanced, even. Sir Owain would no doubt be interested to know of it. Though he’d failed to reach the rail and could not see into the hallway below, Sebastian could hear every click and tumble of the main door being unlocked down there. The creak of the hinge as it opened. The change in the acoustics of the hallway as its enclosed space was opened to the world outside.

He’d expected to hear Stephen Reed’s voice. But it wasn’t the detective. It was Thomas, Sir Owain’s sometime cook and regular driver.

“I’m sorry to bang on the door, sir,” Sebastian heard him say, “but everywhere’s locked up.”

“I know it is,” Sir Owain’s voice came with an extra helping of irritation. “What do you want?”

“Might I have the use of the car today, sir?”

“For what?”

“Nothing you’d disapprove of, sir. And it’s only for an hour or so.”

“A young lady, is it?”

“Something like that, sir.”

Though he and Thomas Arnot had a combustible history, Sebastian had gathered from Sir Owain’s own words that the driver knew nothing of his master’s current plans or past misdeeds. Though the man might not want to be disloyal, he surely wouldn’t want to be branded a conspirator. Sebastian took a breath to call out to him.…

But he failed to draw in any air. The paralysis that had disabled his limbs was now affecting his entire body.

He could hear Sir Owain saying, “Fine, it’s nothing to me. But I’m not buying your petrol.”

“No, sir.”

Sebastian was suffocating. He’d breathed for his entire life without ever thinking how. Now this simple gift had deserted him.

Sir Owain seemed to take his time resecuring the doors and then climbing back up the stairs. Sebastian could hear every beat of his measured tread. Sir Owain seemed to be slowing down as he ascended, and Sebastian could feel his heart slowing along with him.

“Now,” said Sir Owain, lowering himself to sit on the floor beside Sebastian. “Where was I?”

Almost absently, he leaned over and pressed down on the small of Sebastian’s back. Air was driven from Sebastian’s lungs and, on removal of the pressure, enough fresh air rushed back in for the increasing mental fog to recede a little.

“Schafer’s method of artificial respiration,” Sir Owain said. “A trick from the Amazon. Saved one or two of our number after a drowning. Though little good it did them in the end.”

Continuing from where he’d left off, and seeming to find nothing strange in this situation, Sir Owain said, “If those beasts are a mere projection of my madness, then it means that innocents are dying by my hand. I’m no better than Somerville, in a frenzy, chasing his sister down the street with a knife. I do harm, while convinced that I’m acting for the best.

“But I see them. I hear them. And I know them by the damage they have done to those I loved. If they have some objective reality, and there are two of us who know it … don’t you see? You and I can take them on together, and make all the children safe.”

He pressed down again. Without too much exertion on his own part, Sir Owain was working the bellows of his lungs as much as was needed to keep Sebastian alive, until Sebastian could once again sustain himself.

He said, “It will settle the question once and for all. If there is this invisible world of beasts and wonders, and it occupies the same space as our own, and you can see it too … then my sanity will cease to be the issue.”

Sebastian wanted to tell Sir Owain that no experiment was required. He both was mad, and stood alone in his madness, no question about it.

But he did not yet have the breath to say so.