ThePerfectPoison
SEVEN
CALEB LET HIMSELF INTO THE FRONT HALL OF THE darkened house and went upstairs. When he reached the landing he walked down the hall and unlocked the door to his library-laboratory. Inside, he turned up the gas lamps and surveyed the vast room that was either his refuge or his private hell, depending on circumstances and his mood. Lately the resemblance to the netherworld had been growing stronger.
The majority of the Society’s collection of paranormal relics and artifacts were kept in Arcane House, a remote mansion in the country. But many of the ancient records of the organization, some dating back to the late 1600s when the Society was founded, were housed here. His branch of the family had been responsible for them for generations.
The most valuable items in his collection, including several of the private journals of Sylvester Jones, were secured in the large vault built into the stone wall of the old house.
The laboratory that adjoined the library featured the very latest apparatus. He was not a psychically gifted scientist; his true talents lay in another direction, but he was fully capable of carrying out a large number of experiments. He knew his way around the various instruments and devices arrayed on the workbench.
He had always been drawn to the mysteries of the paranormal. Lately, however, what had once been a keen intellectual interest had become what he knew his closest relatives and friends considered an unhealthy obsession.
They whispered that it was in the blood; that in this generation of Joneses, he was the true heir to the brilliant but darkly eccentric Sylvester. They worried that the founder’s lust for forbidden knowledge had passed down through Caleb’s branch of the family tree, a dark seed waiting to take root in fertile ground.
The dangerous plant did not flower in every generation, they said. According to family legend, it had appeared only once after Sylvester, in Caleb’s great-grandfather Erasmus Jones. Erasmus had been born with a talent like the one Caleb possessed. Less than two years after marrying and fathering a son, however, he suddenly started to exhibit increasingly odd eccentricities. He sank swiftly into madness and finally took his own life.
Caleb knew that everyone in the Jones clan believed that the changes they were witnessing in him had begun with the discovery of Sylvester’s tomb and the journals of alchemical secrets it had contained. Only he and his father knew the truth, however. Even within the extensive and psychically powerful Jones family, it was still possible to keep a secret if one grasped it tightly enough.
He walked through the maze of shelving that held the old leather-bound volumes and came to a halt in front of the cold fireplace. There was a cot and two chairs near the hearth. He usually slept here and took his meals here. This was where he received the occasional visitor. He rarely used the other rooms. Most of the furniture in the household was shrouded in dust covers.
A small table held a decanter and two glasses. He poured himself a measure of brandy and went to stand at the window, looking out at the darkest hour of the night.
His thoughts took him back to another very dark night and what everyone had believed was his father’s deathbed. Fergus Jones had dismissed those keeping the vigil around him—the nurse, an assortment of relatives, the servants—all except Caleb.
“COME CLOSER, SON,” Fergus said, his voice weak and hoarse.
Caleb moved from the foot of the bed to stand at his father’s side. He was still stunned by the suddenness of the crisis. Until three days ago his father had been a fit and healthy man of sixty-six years, showing no signs of anything more debilitating than some mild discomfort in his joints, which he treated with salicin. A hunter, like so many males in the Jones line, he had always enjoyed a hearty constitution and seemed destined to live to a ripe old age as had his father before him.
Caleb had been assisting Gabe in an inquiry into the theft of the founder’s formula when he received the urgent summons informing him that his parent had succumbed to a sudden infection of the lungs. He left his cousin to pursue the investigation on his own and hurried to the family estate.
Although he had been anxious, in truth he had expected that his father would recover. It was not until he walked into the solemn, heavily draped household and listened to the doctor’s grim prognosis that he understood just how dire the situation had become.
His relationship with his father had always been close; even more so following the untimely death of his mother, Alice, who had died in a horseback riding accident when he was twenty-one. Fergus had never remarried. Caleb was the sole offspring of the union.
A fire blazed on the hearth, heating the sickroom to an uncomfortable temperature because, although his entire body was hot to the touch, Fergus had complained of the chill. The unnatural sensation of cold, the nurse had explained with an air of morbid satisfaction, was one of the sure indications of the approach of death.
Fergus looked up at him from the stack of pillows. Although he had been sliding in and out of a delirium for most of the day, his eyes now held a feverish clarity. He grasped Caleb’s hand.
“There is something I must tell you,” he whispered.
“What is it?” Caleb said. He tightened his grip on his father’s hot hand.
“I am dying, Caleb.”
“No.”
“I confess that I had planned to leave this world a coward. I did not think that I could bring myself to tell you the truth. But I find that I cannot, after all, leave you in ignorance, especially when there may be some small chance—”
He broke off on a racking cough. When the fit was over he lay quietly, gasping for air.
“Please, sir, do not exert yourself,” Caleb pleaded. “You must conserve your strength.”
“Damn it to hell. This is my deathbed and I will spend what energy I have left as I wish.”
Caleb smiled slightly in spite of his devastated spirits. It was oddly reassuring to hear the familiar, gruff determination in his father’s voice. The men and women of the Jones family were all fighters.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Fergus narrowed his eyes. “You and Alice were the two great blessings bestowed on me over the course of my life. I want you to know that I have always been grateful that the good Lord saw fit to let me have time with both of you.”
“I am the most fortunate of sons to have you for a father, sir.”
“I regret to say that you will not thank me for siring you after I tell you the truth about yourself.” Fergus closed his eyes in pain. “I never did tell your mother, you know. It was my gift to her. Alice died without ever realizing the danger you will confront.”
“What are you talking about, sir?” Perhaps Fergus was hallucinating again.
“I still hesitate to tell you of the truth,” Fergus whispered. “But you are my son and I know you well. You would curse me to your own dying day if I held back knowledge of such a vital nature. Given what I am about to say, you will doubtless abominate me anyway.”
“Whatever it is you feel you must confide, sir, I assure you, it could never drive me to hate you.”
“Wait until you hear what I am about to tell you before you judge.” Another violent cough interrupted Fergus. He gasped a few times and finally recovered his breath. “It concerns your great-grandfather, Erasmus Jones.”
“What about him?” But a cold trickle of knowing slithered down Caleb’s spine.
“You possess a talent very similar to his.”
“I am aware of that.”
“You also know that he went mad, set fire to his library and laboratory and jumped to his death.”
“You think I face the same fate, sir,” he said quietly. “Is that what you are trying to tell me?”
“Your great-grandfather was convinced that it was his talent that drove him mad. He wrote about it in his last journal.”
“I have never heard that Erasmus Jones kept any journals.”
“That is because he destroyed all but one of them in the fire. He was convinced that the vast amount of research he had done with the aid of his talent was meaningless. But he held back one journal because, in the end, he was still Erasmus Jones. He could not bear to destroy his own secrets.”
“Where is this journal?”
Fergus turned his head to look across the room. “You will find it in the hidden compartment of my safe along with another little volume, a notebook that he preserved with the journal. His son, your grandfather, gave them to me on his deathbed, and now I bequeath them to you.”
“Have you read them?”
“No. Neither did your grandfather. We couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
Fergus managed a snort. “Erasmus was Sylvester’s heir to the core. Like the old bastard, he invented his own private code for use in his journals. The notebook is also written in code. Neither your grandfather nor I dared show either book to anyone else in the family who might have been able to decipher it because we feared the secrets it might contain.”
“Why did you and Grandfather keep the journal and the notebook?”
Fergus looked up at him, his feverish eyes remarkably steady. “Because the first page of the journal is written in plain English. Erasmus addressed a message to his son and his future descendants. The note instructed them to preserve both volumes until such time in the future when another male with Sylvester’s talent appeared.”
“Someone like me.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. Erasmus believed that the notebook contained the secret to recovering his sanity. He failed to discover that secret in time to save himself. He was convinced that sometime in the future one of his line would face the same crisis. He hoped that his descendant would be able to alter his own fate by solving the mysteries in that damned volume.”
“What is the second volume?” Caleb asked.
“According to Erasmus, it is Sylvester’s last notebook.”
HE REMAINED BY his father’s bedside until dawn. Fergus opened his eyes just as the first light of day appeared.
“Why the devil is it so damned hot in here?” he growled. He glared at the blaze on the hearth. “What are you trying to do? Burn down the house?”
Stunned, Caleb pushed himself up out of the uncomfortable chair in which he had spent the night. He looked down into his father’s eyes and saw at once that they were no longer bright with fever. The crisis had passed. His father lived. A relief unlike anything he had ever experienced in his life cascaded through him.
“Good morning, sir,” he said. “You gave us a bit of a scare during the past few days. How are you feeling?”
“Tired.” Fergus rubbed the gray stubble on his chin with one hand. “But I do believe I’m going to live after all.”
Caleb smiled. “So it appears, sir. Are you hungry? I’ll send downstairs for some tea and toast.”
“And perhaps some eggs and bacon, as well,” Fergus said.
“Yes, sir.” Caleb reached for the velvet bellpull hanging beside the bed. “Although you may have to do some persuasive talking to convince the nurse that you are ready for a proper breakfast. Between you and me, she looks a bit tyrannical.”
Fergus grimaced. “She’ll be disappointed that I failed to meet her expectations. She was sure I’d cock up my toes by dawn. Pay the woman and send her off to the next poor, dying bastard.”
“I’ll do that,” Caleb said.
Wyszukiwarka
Podobne podstrony:
quin?81101129081 oeb?9 r1Blac?80440337935 oeb?8 r1de Soto Pieniadz kredyt i cykle R1Pala85515839 oeb toc r1mari?81440608889 oeb?9 r1Pala85515839 oeb?6 r1Thom?80553904765 oeb?4 r1knig?81440601187 oeb fm3 r1Bear53901087 oeb qts r1byer?81101110454 oeb?2 r1knig?81440601187 oeb?0 r1Lab2 4 R1 lab24anon?81101003909 oeb?6 r1Bear53901826 oeb p03 r1byer?81101086520 oeb?0 r1knig?81440601187 oeb?1 r1R1 1schw?81101134702 oeb fm1 r1więcej podobnych podstron