The Anubis Gates

He opened it, and his half-incredulous suspicion was confirmed—it was the Journal of Lord Robb, which Doyle had been vainly begging the British Museum for a xerox copy of for a year. How Darrow could have got actual possession of it was unguessable. Though Doyle had never seen the volume, he’d read descriptions of it and knew what it was. Lord Robb had been an amateur criminologist, and his journal was the only source of some of the most colorful, and in many cases implausible, crime stories of the 1810s and 20s; among its tales of kill-trained rats, revenges from beyond the grave, and secret thief and beggar brotherhoods, it contained the only detailed account of the capture and execution of the semi-legendary London murderer known as Dog-Face Joe, popularly believed to have been a werewolf, who reputedly could exchange bodies with anyone he chose but was unable to leave behind the curse of lycanthropy. Doyle had wanted to link this story somehow with the Dancing Ape Madness, at least to the extent of the kind of speculative footnote that’s mainly meant to show how thoroughly the author has done his homework. When Darrow hung up the phone Doyle closed the book and laid it back on the stack, making a mental note to ask the old man later for a copy of the thing. Darrow sat down again beside the book stack with the cups and bottle on it, and picked up right where he’d left off. For the next twenty minutes he fired questions at Doyle, hopping from subject to subject and rarely allowing him time to amplify—though occasionally he would demand every detail Doyle knew about some point; questions on the causes and effects of the French Revolution, the love life of the British Prince Regent, fine points of dress and architecture, differences in regional dialects. And what with Doyle’s good memory and his recent Ashbless researches, he managed to answer nearly all of them. Finally Darrow leaned back and fished a pack of unfiltered cigarettes out of his pocket. “Now,” he said as he lit one and drew deeply on it, “I want you to fake an answer.”

“Fake one?”

“Right. We’re in a roomful of people, let’s say, and several of ‘em probably know more about literature than you do, but you’re being billed as the resident expert, so you’ve got to at least look like you know everything. So somebody asks you, uh, ‘Mr. Doyle, to what extent, in your opinion, was Wordsworth influenced by the philosophy expressed in the verse plays of, I don’t know, Sir Arky Malarkey?’ Quick!”

Doyle cocked an eyebrow. “Well, it’s a mistake, I think, to try to simplify Malarkey’s work that way; several philosophies emerge as one traces the maturing of his thought. Only his very late efforts could possibly have appealed to Wordsworth, and as Fletcher and Cunningham point out in their Concordium there is no concrete evidence that Wordsworth ever actually read Malarkey. I think when trying to determine the philosophies that affected Wordsworth it would be more productive to consider—” He stopped, and grinned uncertainly at Darrow. “And then I could ramble indefinitely about how much he was influenced by the Rights of Man business in the French Revolution.”

Darrow nodded, squinting through the curling smoke. “Not too bad,” he allowed. “Had a guy in here this afternoon—Nostrand from Oxford, he’s editing a new edition of Coleridge’s letters—and he was insulted at the very idea of faking an answer.”

“Nostrand’s evidently more ethical than I am,” said Doyle a little stiffly.

“Evidently. Would you call yourself cynical?”

“No.” Doyle was beginning to get annoyed. “Look, you asked me if I could bluff my way out of a question, and so off the top of my head I had a try at it. I’m not in the habit, though, of claiming to know things I don’t. In print, or in class, I’m always willing to admit—”

Darrow laughed and raised a hand. “Easy, son, I didn’t mean that. Nostrand’s a fool, and I liked your bluff. What I meant was, are you cynical? Do you tend to reject new ideas if they resemble ideas you’ve already decided are nonsense?”

Here come the Ouija boards, Doyle thought. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly.

“What if somebody claimed to have incontrovertible proof that astrology works, or that there’s a lost world inside the earth, or that any of the other things every intelligent person knows are impossible, was possible? Would you listen?”

Doyle frowned. “It’d depend on who was claiming it. Probably not, though.” Oh well, he thought—I still get five thousand and a return ticket.

Darrow nodded, seemingly pleased. “You say what you think, that’s good. One old fraud I talked to yesterday would have agreed that the moon is one of God’s stray golf balls if I’d said it was. Hot for the twenty grand, he was. Well, let’s give you a shot. Time is short, and I’m afraid you’re the likeliest-looking Coleridge authority we’re going to get.”