Death of an Adept

"Yes, that's better," Raeburn purred. "A significant improvement."

With ostentatious care, he rubbed the stone gently against the lapel of his jacket and returned it to his pocket. The searing cold abated, leaving Adam drained and breathless as the door beyond swung fully open to admit the back of a black-clad blond man towing a tea trolley behind him.

Raeburn was still smiling as he nodded toward the newcomer.

"This is Herr Richter, my head of security, whose operatives have so amply redeemed themselves after their little mishap at your gate lodge last week," he said genially, even as Richter turned and Adam recognized the lean, bespectacled face and hard eyes that had figured time and again in Peregrine's drawings of recent weeks.

A darting look at the trolley Richter was rattling closer to the bed evoked a pang of more visceral dread, for the purpose of the paraphernalia laid out in such orderly array was all too obvious to anyone medically trained - stark declaration of Raeburn' s ability and intention to hold Adam helpless for as long as it suited his pleasure.

Nor was Raeburn leaving anything to chance, where the handling of his prize was concerned. Though Adam could have predicted the appearance of the two hard-eyed professionals who followed Richter into the room, the self-assured younger man accompanying them seemed out of place at first - pinstriped suit cut in the height of Bond Street fashion, with dark hair worn full and longish above a handsome, self-indulgent face - and with an expensive stethoscope draped around his neck with studied arrogance.

"I believe you already know Dr. Mallory," Raeburn said smoothly, even as Adam took a startled second look at the suave newcomer. "I have asked him to ensure that your stay with us will be as restful as possible."

Raeburn's immediate plans for him had been evident from the moment Richter arrived with the trolley. Still, a sense of queasy betrayal reinforced Adam's apprehension as he realized that the physician engaged to facilitate the arrangement, in violation of all medical ethics, was the slick young anaesthetist from his own hospital.

Mallory gave him a nod in sinister parody of a pleasant bedside manner, tearing open an alcohol swab and then selecting a pre-loaded hypodermic syringe from the tea trolley. Simultaneously, Richter's two associates came briskly around to the other side of the bed and, at a signal from Raeburn, pinned Adam's body and legs flat to the bed. There was nothing Adam could do as Richter pushed back his left sleeve and constricted the blood-flow with a vise-like grip around the upper arm, holding the forearm steady so that Mallory could slip his needle home.

"Consider this in the light of pre-op medication," Raeburn said softly from the sidelines, as Mallory's thumb slowly tightened on the plunger. "It would be extremely inconvenient if you were to raise a hue and cry. I simply can't abide the thought of so many good plans going to waste - so I think we'll be keeping you sedated from here on out."

As Adam's Second, it fell to McLeod to convene the council of war that, even then, was getting under way in the library at Strathmourne. Peregrine had spread the word immediately upon receiving Donald Cochrane's telephone call earlier in the evening, and key members and supporters of the Hunting Lodge had converged on the house in the next several hours.

When McLeod finally arrived with Philippa and Ximena, following the latter's release from Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, they had found the assembled household huddled around a portable TV set hastily brought in by Humphrey, for the abduction of Sir Adam Sinclair, a mere week before his scheduled society wedding, had been sensational enough to rate mention on the ten o'clock news. Among the members of the Hunting Lodge anxiously awaiting a more specific update from McLeod were Peregrine, the Houstons, and Lady Julian, fetched by Humphrey directly upon leaving the crime scene. Also present, by special dispensation, were Julia Lovat and Harry Nimmo.

"The way the abduction was carried out is totally consistent with methods used in the past by Francis Raeburn and the Lodge of the Lynx," Philippa said, after Ximena had related the basic circumstances of Adam's kidnapping. "Raeburn has crossed swords with Adam more than once; and while we've always been able to short-stop him, we've never quite managed to bring him down. Quite clearly, revenge will play a large part in Raeburn's present motivations. While I cannot over-stress the danger to Adam himself, however, there is little doubt in my mind that the abduction is also the prelude to something infinitely more sinister in its implications."