The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx (25 page)

McLeod waved the cup away and mumbled, “No, on both counts.” He drew a deep breath and said more distinctly, “Personal address file. Get Christopher Houston.”

Keeping a close watch on his ashen-faced superior, Cochrane found the number, picked up one of the phones, and dialed. The number rang and rang at the other end, but with no answer.

“There doesn’t seem to be anyone at home,” Cochrane said. “You look bloody awful. I really think you ought to let me call a doctor.”

The room seemed to be in danger of receding again. McLeod swallowed carefully and took a fragile grip on himself.

“Try to find Peregrine Lovat,” he muttered through set teeth. “Ring Humphrey at Strathmourne—the number’s under Sinclair. Humphrey’ll know where he’s to be found.”

* * *

John Edward Muir, former Lord Provost of Edinburgh, had a face that in another age might have belonged to a border chieftain. Standing back from the easel to survey his work with a critical eye, Peregrine was satisfied that he was doing full justice to the bold, enterprising spirit that he sensed dwelling beneath the former provost’s apparently sober exterior. He glanced thoughtfully back at his subject, who was sitting patiently in his full ceremonial robes a few yards away.

“Excuse me, sir, but could I ask you to lift your head a little?”

The live sitting was taking place in the Muirs’ own drawing room in the exclusive Edinburgh district of Ravelston Dykes. The provost did as he was requested and said with a gruff twinkle, “How much longer before I’m fully immortalized on canvas?”

“This ought to be the last time you’ll actually have to sit for me,” Peregrine said, his attention on his brush strokes as he added a few subtle touches of madder brown to the angle of the portrait’s jaw. He finished the adjustment, approved it with a grin, and relaxed.

“There we are, sir. You can stand up a moment and stretch now, if you like.”

The drawing room door opened, and the provost’s wife stepped into the room looking slightly bewildered.

“I’m sorry to interrupt the sitting, Mr. Lovat,” she said, “but I have a PC Cochrane on the phone asking to speak to you.”

Puzzled, for he could not recall ever meeting a police constable called Cochrane, Peregrine set aside his brushes and palette and wiped his fingers on a clean paint rag as he followed Mrs. Muir into the hall and picked up the telephone she indicated. Perhaps Cochrane was one of Inspector McLeod’s men. But why should McLeod want to call Peregrine here?

“This is Peregrine Lovat,” he said.

“Yes, Mr. Lovat. PC Donald Cochrane,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “I’m calling on behalf of Inspector Noel McLeod. He’s instructed me to request that you come immediately to his office at police headquarters on a matter of utmost urgency.”

It wasn’t like McLeod to overstate a case. And why had the inspector not phoned himself? A warning light went on at the back of Peregrine’s mind.

“What’s the trouble?” he asked. “Can you tell me what this is about?”

“It’s—a bit difficult to explain over the phone, sir,” said the voice. “It would be better if you could come down here right away and see for yourself.”

Curiouser and curiouser.
Why hadn’t McLeod phoned in person?
The mental alarms began to sound in earnest.
Could something have happened to Adam?

“Very well,” Peregrine said. “Tell the inspector I’ll be leaving at once and will join him as soon as I can.”

After tendering a hasty apology to the Muirs, he packed up his painting things as quickly as possible and carried them down to his car. A quick glance at his Edinburgh street guide before heading out confirmed that police headquarters was in Fettes Avenue, as he had thought, less than two miles away. He found himself fantasizing all kinds of disasters as he pulled away from the curb, whipping the little Morris Minor in and out of traffic with an impetuosity that earned him more than one indignant glare from more sedate motorists.

He was there in less than ten minutes. Narrowly avoiding a brush with a glazier’s van, he wheeled into the police station parking lot to find every space filled. With a muttered imprecation and a prayer to whatever god warded off traffic wardens, he left the Morris standing by the curb on a double yellow line and made a beeline for the front entrance.

It was the first time he’d ever been inside McLeod’s working domain. A desk officer looked up attentively as he came through the glass doors and, when Peregrine had identified himself and his business, picked up the phone and called upstairs. Hardly a minute later, a strapping, sandy-haired young man in uniform, who looked to be about the same age as Peregrine, came out of a door beyond the desk and raised a beckoning hand.

“Mr. Lovat?’ he said. “Come with me, please.”

“What’s happened?” Peregrine murmured, as they headed up a rear stairwell.

Cochrane shook his head. “Not here, please, Mr. Lovat. He’s going to have to explain it himself—if he can. Try not to look too anxious as we go through the outer office.”

He said nothing else as they reached the top of the stairs and turned down a windowed corridor that skirted the back of the building, leading Peregrine on through a big open-plan general office to a numbered row of doors at the far end. McLeod’s nameplate was on the door numbered 5B, and the insistent ring of a telephone came faintly from inside.

Cochrane gave the door a brief rap before opening it and ushering Peregrine in, heading immediately for the phone—for McLeod clearly was oblivious to it and to their arrival, slumped over the desk with his head awkwardly pillowed on his right arm. As Peregrine closed the door behind them, appalled, Cochrane leaned across to snare the ringing phone.

“Inspector McLeod’s desk,” he said a little breathlessly. “No, I’m afraid he’s in a meeting. This is PC Cochrane, his assistant. May I help you?”

As Cochrane dealt with the caller, Peregrine came a little closer to peer cautiously at McLeod. The inspector’s face was the color of putty, etched with lines of pain, his body taut. As soon as Cochrane had hung up, Peregrine turned on him.

“What happened?” he demanded in a low voice. “What’s wrong with him?”

“I don’t honestly know,” the young constable said softly. “And he wouldn’t let me call a doctor. Whatever happened seems to have something to do with this.” He pulled open the left-hand desk drawer. “We’re not to touch it except with the silk. He was very adamant about that.”

Mystified, Peregrine gingerly lifted a corner of the handkerchief and peeled it back to reveal an origami animal made from gold paper. A closer look established that the animal was a lynx.

A cold qualm of revulsion knotted his stomach. Making sure not to touch the gold paper, Peregrine hastily replaced the wrappings and closed the drawer before returning his attention to McLeod.

“Inspector,” he called softly, setting his hand on one shoulder. “Noel, it’s me, Peregrine. You asked me to come, and I’m here. Please, can you tell me what you want me to do?”

There was no response from McLeod. His concern mounting, Peregrine glanced back at Cochrane, hovering anxiously nearer the door.

“How long has he been like this?”

“I found him about half an hour ago,” Cochrane murmured. “It couldn’t have happened more than five or ten minutes before that, because he’d sent me for coffee. He was able to talk at first, but it’s been ten or fifteen minutes since I last heard anything out of him—shortly before I reached you on the phone.” Seeing Peregrine’s expression, he added, “He had me try to call a Father Christopher Houston first. When there was no answer there, he had me call Sir Adam Sinclair’s man Humphrey to find out where you were. I begged him to let me call a doctor, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He made me promise not to call for help until you got here.”

Why me?
Peregrine wondered to himself, returning his attention to McLeod. There was only one answer that he could think of: McLeod evidently had reason to believe that Peregrine might be able to help where conventional medicine was sure to fail. It was a daunting thought. He glanced at McLeod again and fought down a strong pang of fear and self-doubt.

God, I hope you’re right, McLeod,
he reflected grimly.
I’ve got to think! What would Adam do, if he were here?

He made an effort to compose his thoughts, searching through his recent memories for images of Adam at work. Among them inexplicably surfaced a seemingly unrelated image of Michael Brodie’s ring. Since receiving it from Lady Julian, Peregrine had emulated Adam in carrying it with him always, protected in a small snap-pouch of Chinese silk. It was in his trouser pocket now, and the impulsion to put it on was suddenly very strong.

The very idea seemed presumptuous, especially since he was not yet a member of the Hunting Lodge and had not been given Adam’s official leave to wear the ring as a badge of membership. At the same time, however, he was conscious of a growing conviction that he was going to need the ring as a focus if he was to have any hope at all of assisting McLeod in his present straits. A glance at McLeod’s right hand confirmed that he was wearing
his
ring. Perhaps Peregrine could use his own to somehow link with McLeod’s, drawing on the other man’s expertise for guidance in what to do.

Biting at his lip, he slid his hand into his pocket and closed the pouch and ring in his fist, bringing them out and pressing the fist to his lips as he reached for whatever vestiges of Sir Michael Brodie remained with the ring.

Forgive me, Sir Michael, if this doesn’t meet with your approval,
he told Lady Julian’s husband,
but the inspector needs help, and I don’t know what else to do.

Keeping his back to Cochrane, he quickly unsnapped the pouch and took out the ring, tucking the pouch back into his blazer pocket and slipping the ring onto the third finger of his right hand. He half expected a punishing stab of power. Instead, a comforting sense of gentle warmth seemed to radiate along his hand. Encouraged, he turned to Cochrane.

“I’ll see what I can do to improve matters,” he told his counterpart. “Can you make sure we’re not disturbed?”

Nodding, Cochrane came over to unplug the cords from both phones.

“Just for the moment, I’m going to disable these, so callers will just think he’s out,” he explained. “I had to field several calls while I was waiting for you to get here, but I don’t like lying. This is safer, if we don’t want to arouse suspicion.”

Peregrine could not fault the logic of that. Moving the files and computer print-outs off the spare office chair, he dragged it around to the inspector’s left side and sat down, leaving Cochrane to take up guard duty by the door. Mentally rehearsing all that Adam had taught him since their first meeting, he concentrated first on settling into a semi-trance state, regulating his breathing until he succeeded in bringing all his faculties into harmonious balance with one another.

A sense of deep calm came gradually upon him. He had a feeling that McLeod should be balanced as well—or at least as much as was possible in his present state—and after a moment, grounded in his own calm, he reached out with his ring hand and lightly touched his fingertips to McLeod’s forehead, emulating the hypnotic cue he had seen Adam use on both of them in the past.

“Relax, Noel,” he murmured. “Go deep asleep.”

To his relieved surprise, McLeod drew a deep, shuddering breath, like a diver about to plunge into a well, and let it out in a heavy sigh. Instinctively Peregrine matched breathing with his subject, summoning all the mental voice he could manage.

“Noel, it’s Peregrine,” he called softly, shifting his hand to clasp McLeod’s wrist, feeling the pulse beneath his fingertips. “If you can hear me, try to help me help you. Show me what’s afflicting you.”

The response came not in words, but in a shift of image. All at once Peregrine experienced the now-familiar blurring of his vision. When his inner Sight keyed in, he could see as if in overlay a spiky mass of grey tendrils wrapped round about McLeod’s head and neck like a helmet of thorns.

Peregrine grimaced, horrified. The tendrils were not inert. He could see a throbbing pulse running throughout the interlacing branches, in irregular counterpoint to McLeod’s own heartbeat. They were so tightly bound together that the very idea of untangling them seemed ludicrous. As he wavered, wondering what to do, a new light seemed to kindle just behind his eyes. In that brief instant of illumination, he shifted focus to the ring on his hand and felt a sudden rush of power to his fingertips.

The power seemed to be coming from a part of his being he hadn’t even known existed. In response, the ring itself seemed to come to life, the stone glowing in his inner vision with a pure blue radiance—very much the way the stone in the pommel of Adam’s
skean dubh
had glowed that night at Urquhart, when he used it to ward off the Faerie Host.

As the light continued to brighten, Peregrine took his hand away from McLeod’s wrist and reached instinctively toward the stricken man’s head. He could See the power surrounding his ring hand like an aura now, nearly a handspan out in all directions, and he reached out boldly to pluck at the nearest thorny tendril writhing around McLeod.

It sizzled and separated at his touch, giving off a noxious spurt of grey smoke. Encouraged, Peregrine pulled away a whole handful. The whippy grey briars adhered to his fingers and wrist, nettling his skin like mild acid, but they seemed to do no real damage. Setting his teeth against the prickling discomfort, he shook them loose above the wastebasket and saw them shrivel away in bursts of dirty flame. Smiling in grim satisfaction, he went after another handful.

By the time he had finished clearing the tendrils away, McLeod was beginning to breathe more easily, but the malevolent energy that had created the tendrils was still hovering around him. Instinctively Peregrine knew that its source was the desk drawer and what it contained; and until the lynx charm could be neutralized, McLeod would remain under threat.

He opened the drawer and pulled back the handkerchief covering it, wondering whether the ring would work on the charm as it had on the tendrils. He made a tentative pass over it with his ring hand, but a heat like the equivalent of a psychic blast furnace roared up at him, causing him to jerk his hand hastily away.