Perhaps it was for the best, her having the picture. Not that she would ever use it against him—it was his character, not hers, that deserved to be thrown into doubt—but this last meeting made her wonder if she might, one day, require the protection it could provide. She would never taunt him with it, never threaten him. But what about him? Would Wilhelm ever lash out against her? If so, it could serve as a weapon of defense.
This, Irene thought, was not the last she would hear from him, this disloyal, ungrateful lout. She would guard the photograph with everything she had. The Crown Prince of Bohemia was not a man to be trusted.
THE SPIRITUALIST
by David Morrell
Again, the nightmare woke him. Again, he couldn’t go back to sleep.
As the bells of nearby Westminster Abbey sounded two o’clock, Conan Doyle rose from his bed. Always determined not to waste time, he considered going to the desk in his sitting room to write a few more thousand words, but instead his troubled mood prompted him to dress and go down the stairs. Careful not to wake his housekeeper, he unlocked the door and stepped outside.
A cold mist enveloped shadowy Victoria Street in the heart of metropolitan London. During the day, the rumble and rattle of motor vehicles reverberated off the area’s three-story buildings, but at this solitary hour, the only sound was the echo of Conan Doyle’s shoes as he reached the pavement and turned to the left, proceeding past dark shops.
Even in the night and the mist, the back of Westminster Abbey dominated, its hulking presence rising over him. He recalled his sense of irony a year earlier when he’d finally found a suitable location for the most important enterprise of his life, noting that it was only a stone’s throw from one of England’s most revered religious sites. He hadn’t spoken with His Grace about their competing views, but he suspected that the archbishop wasn’t amused.
A hazy streetlamp revealed the sign above the door: PSYCHIC BOOK SHOP, LIBRARY & MUSEUM. Because a sense of urgency always propelled him, Conan Doyle stretched his long legs to walk the short distance, but of late, those legs—once so strong in rugby, soccer, and cricket—had betrayed him, as had his once-powerful chest, making him pause to catch his breath before he unlocked the door and entered.
A bell rang. During the day, its jangle was welcome, announcing that a rare visitor had arrived, but at night, the bell violated the stillness. Gas lamps would have provided an appropriate moody atmosphere. This was 1926, however. Instead of striking a match and opening a valve, Conan Doyle reached to his left and turned an electrical switch. Two bulbs on each wall provided instant illumination, as did dangling globes in the ceiling. The yellow lights revealed numerous rows of bookshelves, the smell of old and new pages pleasantly filling his nostrils.
He knew their titles without needing to see them: among them, Letters on Animal Magnetism, Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, The Spirit Manifestations, Experiments in Thought Transference, Phantasms of the Living, Minutes of the Society for Psychical Research, Survival of Bodily Death, and—
Brittle rapping startled him. Turning sharply, he saw a constable frowning through a window.
Conan Doyle opened the door.
“Unusual to see you at this late an hour, Sir Arthur.” The constable peered into the shop, straining to see its back corners. “Is everything all right?”
“Perfectly. I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to come here and catch up on some work.” It had been more than four decades since Conan Doyle left Edinburgh, and yet his Scottish burr remained thick.
“You’re certain nothing’s wrong?” the constable persisted.
“Absolutely. Thank you for your concern.”
The constable gave him a troubled nod, seeming baffled about why one of the most revered authors in Great Britain was wasting his time in this strange shop and why he now lived in a small flat just down the street rather than at one of his large country houses.
Only when Conan Doyle closed and locked the door did the constable continue along the misty street, his footsteps receding.
Stillness again enveloped the shop.
Of course, everything was definitely not all right, but what troubled Conan Doyle wasn’t anything that a constable could correct.