“Where you’re being taken,” Matthew went on, “may well be your finest dream. Professor Fell needs a chemist. I have no doubt he is willing to pay you anything you ask. The village isn’t the worst place on earth, and I believe—hear me now, don’t try to blank me out—that if you perform your duties to his expectation, you will have the solitude you require, all the research materials you could ever wish for, and—” He paused, but he had to say the next part. “And all the test subjects you might want. The whole place is an experiment in chemistry. What would be better for you? A long sea voyage to some foreign country where the intrigues might get you killed before you even settled in? Well, there would be nothing to keep you from journeying to London or wherever you’d like, once you proved your worth to the professor. You would not be a prisoner there, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

There was still no response from the doctor, but had a fraction of the angry glare in his eyes softened?

“All I want from you is the application of an antidote to the drug that is killing the senses of the woman I love,” Matthew said. “That’s what this has all been about. The formula for that antidote is somewhere in the book. I have as much faith in you as Lash did. Do you understand that? I have faith that you can concoct and apply that antidote, and that will finish the business between you and me. But it will only begin the business between you and the professor, if that is what you wish.” As he spoke these words he couldn’t believe he was hearing himself. Matthew Corbett … speaking on behalf of Professor Fell … building up that damned village … offering its trapped inhabitants up as chemical experiments, which of course they already were. And Matthew had made a promise to the kidnapped Italian opera star Madam Alicia Candoleri that he would somehow free everyone from Y Beautiful Bedd.

He imagined how Julian might grin from ear-to-ear if he could hear all this.

Welcome to the club, Julian might say. We are always in need of another bad man.

In essence, Matthew realized, he was sitting here talking to Lazarus Firebaugh as a member of Professor Fell’s organization.

He took a deeper drink of the cider, because the taste in his mouth was terribly bitter.

“Just consider these things,” Matthew continued. “Money … freedom … solitude … research … and respect from the professor. He needs you, Doctor. I need you. But all I ask at the moment is that when our innkeeper comes through that door and I remove the gag from your mouth, you go along with the story we have invented for our passage.”

Did Firebaugh’s eyes glaze over? Did a muscle twitch behind his red beard? It was difficult to tell.