The Haunting of H. G. Wells

by Robert Masello

  But that did not seem to be the sticking point.

  Kurt, his eyes lowered to the teacup and a half-eaten scone on the plate, mumbled something about his country, his duty to it, his unwillingness to betray his comrades. Wells and Jane had been over this territory several times already and even without knowing all the words, Wells had been able to gather the gist of what the young man was going on about. If, God forbid, one of his own sons had ever been faced with a predicament like this, he would hope that the boy would behave in much the same fashion.

  “But your presence here is now known to the government,” Jane said, slowly, before piecing together the same thought in rudimentary German and reiterating it. “You have no choice now. This is the only way to keep you safe.”

  By saying everything twice, in each language, she was able to keep both Wells and Kurt apprised of the discussion.

  Glowering at Wells, whom he plainly regarded as having betrayed him, Kurt slapped the tabletop hard enough to make the crockery jump, shoved his chair back, and stood up. “Nein, nein, nein, I can’t”—stopping to search for the English words—“do this thing.” He lapsed back into a torrent of German that even Jane appeared to have trouble keeping up with. She exchanged an exasperated look with her husband.

  “Tell him he’ll be arrested and tried as a spy if he doesn’t,” Wells said.

  “I’ve told him.”

  “Tell him that you’ll be arrested.”

  Jane hesitated.

  “Tell him that you’ll be shot, too.”

  “That goes too far,” she mumbled.

  “Does it? If it weren’t for my friendship with Winston, what do you think would happen to you? If it weren’t for my fame, not to put too fine a point on it, what kind of treatment do you think you would receive for having harbored and nursed back to health a German airman?”

  Kurt was observing them closely, like a child watching his parents bicker.

  “Oh, and let’s not fail to mention that Dr. Grover, with whom he shares a kinship with the fatherland, will also be arrested for aiding and abetting the enemy,” Wells continued. “Does he want to bring doom down upon every single person who has helped him here? Does his loyalty to the kaiser supersede his loyalty to the people who have actually saved his life?”

  Carefully, Jane went about assembling the sentiments in German and expressing them to Kurt, who limped back and forth in the kitchen. Wells could see the torment on his young face. The worst thing a boy like this should have had to be worrying about at this age was whether or not the farm girl he fancied had fancied him back, but instead here he was, wrestling with questions of life and death—his own, and others’.

  “You, they would not shoot,” Kurt finally stammered, fixing on Jane.

  “They most certainly would,” Wells corrected him. “And they will.”

  “Then I can run.”

  “Where? All the way to Germany?” Wells said, throwing up his hands to emphasize the utter futility. Gesturing at Kurt’s damaged leg, he added, “And you wouldn’t get far, anyway.”

  “I don’t know what else to say,” Jane sighed. “H. G., how else can we convince him that cooperation is his only salvation? He’s as stubborn as a mule.”

  “The Teutonic temperament at its worst.” Wells rubbed his chin contemplatively. He’d known that the task wouldn’t be easy, but given that there was no other reasonable course of action, he had not expected it to be this hard, either. Surely, the boy would see the light. All he had to do was provide Churchill with a few details about the operation of the zeppelins, all under the strictest secrecy, and he could be safely ensconced for the duration of the war among his displaced countrymen in the heart of London. By all rights, he should have jumped at the chance.

  “No one need ever know that he talked to our War Office,” Wells said. “Does he fully grasp that?”

  “I’ll try, one more time,” Jane replied, but before she could start in, there was the sound of an approaching automobile—or several.

  “You weren’t expecting anyone, were you?” Wells asked Jane, and she shook her head.

  “Kurt—run to the barn,” she said, hurrying to the back door and throwing it open. “Hide there!” No translation was needed. Jane grabbed an old overcoat from the rack and tossed it over his shoulders as he hobbled out into the yard, where a light dusting of snow lay on the ground. Fortunately, it was a dark night, with a thick cloud cover. Slamming the door behind him, she turned to Wells and said, “Go to the front and see who it is!”

  But he was already on his way. Headlamps swept the parlor windows as he peered outside. Leading the procession was Slattery’s livery car, but close behind there was a black police van and a camouflaged military vehicle. As soon as they had pulled up in front of the house, doors were flung open and the occupants leapt out. Slattery, flanked by two constables, raced to the door, banging the knocker hard, while four or five soldiers fanned out around the house. It had to have been Churchill, Wells thought, who had authorized the raid; there was no other explanation. Had he not trusted Wells to get the job done?

  “Coming!” Wells shouted as he went to the vestibule. “Don’t knock the door down!”

  “We’ve a warrant to search the premises,” one of the policemen said, brandishing the paper, as Slattery nodded his head vigorously.

  “I knew it all along,” he declared. “There was somebody out where the zeppelin went down. I saw him!”

  The policemen brushed right past Wells, one of them barging up the stairs. Jane stood immobile as the other, gun drawn, poked around the ground floor.

  Slattery had an odd look on his face, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. Were Wells and his wife collaborators? Were they involved in some nefarious scheme that he was not permitted to fully comprehend? Whatever was actually going through his mind, Wells could see that his blood was up—he lived for the hunt, and the hunt was on.

  “What are you looking for?” Wells said, as benignly as he could.

  “Not what—a who.” His shotgun was strapped behind one shoulder. “I been tellin’ your wife there was somebody lurkin’ about, and I bet it’s one of them Germans from the crash.”

  Wells did not reply, but Slattery was already done with talking. With the fox in the fields, he wanted to run with the hounds. He stepped away from the door, and lifted his chin, as if sniffing the air, before disappearing into the night.

  From above, Wells could hear the thump of the constable’s feet. Jane shot him a worried look.

  “What should we do?” she whispered.

  Wells wasn’t sure, either. They could just give Kurt up—tell the officers where he was hiding—but that would only confirm that they had been complicit all along. What, he wondered, had the constables been told? How much did they already know?

  The one thing he did need to do was make sure that he was there for the arrest, or surrender, if they found him. He might need to act as the boy’s shield.

  “You stay here,” he said, “I’m going to see what’s happening out back.”

  Jane nodded, as the policeman came back down the stairs.

  “Why is there an extra bedroom made up?”

  “My husband and I sleep in separate bedrooms.”

  “I mean the one up top, in the attic.”

  Wells left her to make up some story—he heard her saying something about the children—as he walked back through the dining room, as nonchalantly as possible, glancing out a window, where a soldier was nosing around in the bushes. Once in the kitchen, he parted the curtains by the stove and saw a figure outside—Slattery—with his shotgun in his hands, and his head down, studying the ground.

  Footprints, in the snow. Damn.

  Slattery’s head came up. Looking toward the barn, he set off at a trot.

  Wells couldn’t wait any longer; he would have to get to Kurt and orchestrate his being taken into custody. He just wished that Winston had not forced his hand like this.

  Wells stepped outsi
de, and called to Slattery to slow down. “Don’t do anything rash!”

  But Slattery didn’t lose a beat, and by now two of the soldiers had begun to converge on the barn, too.

  Wells picked up his own pace, but slipped on the snowy ground and went sprawling. He clambered to his feet, and called out, “Wait!”

  One of the soldiers threw open the barn doors. Slattery was the first one through.

  “Wait for me!” Wells cried out. He only hoped that Kurt was hidden well enough that he could get there in time to negotiate the boy’s surrender himself. “Wait!”

  And then a shotgun blast split the frosty air.

  No, Wells thought, it can’t be.

  Another shot rang out.

  Slipping and sliding, he reached the barn. A gray owl was fluttering wildly around the roof beams, before swooping out into the night.

  Slattery still held the rifle butt to his shoulder. A wisp of blue smoke coiled around the barrel.

  Hanging upside down on the ladder leading to the loft, his legs still entangled in the rungs, was the body of Kurt. His head and arms, in the oversized coat, hung down limply.

  “What did you do?” Wells shouted. “What did you do?”

  Slattery, looking triumphant, lowered the shotgun. “Killed a baby-killer, that’s what I done.”

  The constables and soldiers crowded in.

  “He was comin’ for me,” Slattery declared, to justify the shooting, “so I let him have it.”

  Coming for you? From the ladder? Wells thought. No. He was surrendering.

  “We’ll take it from here,” the policeman who had carried the warrant said. “And not a word of this, from any of you, to anyone around town. Understood?”

  The other members of the search party signaled their assent.

  “Good. That’s on strict orders from the First Lord of the Admiralty.”

  As two of the soldiers went to the ladder to free the body, Wells joined them. It felt wrong to leave the boy so friendless, manhandled by strangers.

  From the barn door, he heard a muffled cry. He looked up to see Jane, hand to her mouth, frozen there. As the soldiers carried the corpse out, one holding it by the feet and the other under the arms, Wells followed, his hand resting on the boy’s broken ankle.

  Jane was shivering, as if from the cold, but he knew better. Without a word to Slattery or any of the search party, Wells escorted her back to the house and quickly closed the door. He did not want their private shock and grief to further betray the truth.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Rebecca had eaten crow, and she did not like the taste of it. The feathers were still stuck in her teeth.

  She had not thought it wise to spend another night at Wells’s flat—not so long as he was up at the rectory attending to some private business that involved Jane. What if he unexpectedly came back to London with her? She hadn’t heard a peep out of him since his departure, and as she had not actually followed through on her oath to find a flat of her own, she had had no recourse but to retreat to her family home. Her sisters had been unabashedly delighted to see her, but her mother had been unable to resist gloating.

  “I’m not even going to ask you to explain where you’ve slept on your nights away, Cicily, because I see no point in listening to a lie.”

  Cicily. Not Rebecca. Her mother would never call her by her own chosen name.

  “I can only assume that the notorious Mr. Wells has had his way with you, and like the others who have come before you, you have now been discarded. I hope you are quite proud of yourself.”

  From her favorite perch on the piano bench, Mrs. Fairfield leveled a damning gaze, one that Lettie and Winnie, squashed together on the loveseat, tried to divert by calling attention to themselves.

  “Did I tell you that I’ve been given a promotion, Mother,” Lettie said, “and a pay raise, too?”

  “Oh, and I passed my certification course,” Winnie said, “with the highest score of anyone.”

  But Mrs. Fairfield was not so easily distracted. “So what have you got to say for yourself? Don’t tell me that the cat’s got your tongue.”

  Oh, how Rebecca longed to say something cutting, but a defiant gesture now would only land her back out on the cold and lonely street, from which she had just come. Sometimes silence was the better part of valor, so she stayed mum.

  “You may stay here, but only if you acquit yourself in a proper manner. I won’t have you setting an improper example for your sisters.”

  “Mother,” Lettie said, “we’re older than she is.”

  “And thoroughly corrupted already,” Winnie added, with a wink at Rebecca.

  “This isn’t a subject for amusement,” their mother said, rising from the bench. “One day you will understand that. You have no idea how hard it has been, since your father abandoned us, to keep our heads above water. I’ve done the best I could, but it has never been easy.”

  “And I do understand that,” Rebecca said, in a rare concession, one that seemed to take her sisters by surprise. “I am forever grateful for the sacrifices you have made.” Mrs. Fairfield appeared confused by the admission.

  But Rebecca did mean it. Much as she resented her mother’s control, she did recognize what a difficult row she had had to hoe. It was all part of the reason Rebecca fought so hard for women’s suffrage, and women’s rights overall. The war had forced such issues onto the back burner, but it wouldn’t last forever, and once it was over, she planned to pick up exactly where she had left off. In the meantime, she could see that even the war had moved the cause of women’s rights forward; with so many young men enlisting to fight, jobs that had once been off-limits were now being filled by young women—everything from bus conductors to munitions factory workers. Women were being given a taste of greater economic freedom and, as Rebecca had just written in a piece for the Freewoman magazine, it was a taste that they would not readily relinquish at the war’s end.

  With relative tranquility restored to the house, Rebecca was able to enjoy a civilized dinner—her mother’s culinary skills, though hardly refined, were demonstrably better than her own—and once Mrs. Fairfield had retired to her boudoir for the night, Rebecca tossed her reporter’s pad into her handbag, and threw on her coat and hat.

  “You’re not going out again at this hour?” Winnie said, lounging on Rebecca’s bed.

  “And not just after going to all the trouble of forging a peace agreement,” Lettie put in, from the window seat. “Everything was going so well!”

  “I’ll be back later, but right now there’s something I need to do.”

  “It can’t wait till morning?” Winnie complained. “We could all play cribbage together.”

  “No, in spite of the overwhelming appeal of playing cribbage at home with my two older sisters, I am going to go out.”

  “You needn’t be so sarcastic,” Lettie said.

  “That’s right,” Winnie concurred, in a playful tone. “We could form a knitting circle, if you prefer.”

  Rebecca slung her handbag over one shoulder and waved one hand backward as she crept past her mother’s room, down the stairs, and out the front door. All day long, she had awaited some word—at the office, at Wells’s flat, or even at the Fairfield home—to let her know when H. G. was returning to London, and when they could go to the War Office, or the Admiralty, with what they had found out. She was eager to show him the incriminating gold lighter, which she carried in her purse, even as she recognized that it was just one more way in which she sought to gain his approval. Whether it was a compliment on one of her published pieces, or a laugh at one of her clever remarks, she was in his thrall and wanted above all to impress, as well as enrapture, the great H. G. Wells. Some feminist, she scoffed at herself.

  It was another cold and bitter night, and she set off at a brisk pace, composing her thoughts as she went. Her first impulse had been to break into the Crowley house and find out if Anton Graf actually lived there; if he did, she meant to discover his secret
laboratory and thereby close the case, definitively. But the more she mulled it over, the more she felt the task of penetrating the house, unnoticed and unaided, seemed beyond her talents. That was when she hit on the notion of Arthur Machen once again; Machen was a regular presence there, and if anyone could contrive to take her under his wing and in through the doors of Crowley’s temple to indulgence and depravity, it was he.

  When she arrived at his address in Notting Hill Gate, she took a deep breath before entering the dilapidated building, and climbing to the top of the stairs. As Wells had once told her, she smelled the place long before she reached it. Cats and incense. When she knocked, she heard a clawing at the door in response, and had to knock again before she heard a gruff and surprised, “Who’s there?”

  But as soon as she announced herself, the door was instantly flung wide, and a face out of some nightmare greeted her—a stony gray mask with carved curls of hair and eyes buried deep in hollow sockets. Behind the unmoving mouth, she glimpsed a hint of lips and heard a muffled, “And have you come to join in the rites of Eleusis?”

  “The rites of what?” The disguise reminded her of the comedy and tragedy masks that hung above the entryway to the acting academy where she had once been enrolled, but the sight of Machen wearing one was unnerving, to say the least.

  “Eleusis, where the ancient Greeks explored the great mysteries of the afterlife.”

  His words remained indistinct, and Rebecca was not about to keep talking to a man in such a strange getup. “Take it off, please. I can barely understand you.”

  Lifting the mask back over the top of his head, Machen breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s really quite stifling under that.” A few stray gray hairs sprouted in all directions. “But please, do come in,” he said, nudging a black cat away from the open door with his foot.

  The smell of cedarwood and sour milk was overwhelming, and every surface was cluttered with books or bric-a-brac of one sort or another. The long room, with its musty curtains and battered antique furniture, felt like a tomb that had not been aired out for centuries.