Blaylock, James P - Langdon St Ives 02

by Lord Kelvin's Machine

  He tugged open the door, and you can guess who stood there—Mrs. Pule, grinning Hke a gibbon ape and holding the gun. I whirled around to the outside door, which still stood open, ready to leap out into the night, and thinking, of course, that one of us ought to get out in order to find the constable, to summon aid. Could I help it if it was always me who was destined for such missions? But there stood Willis, right outside, looking haggard and wearing the mask of tragedy—and training the captain's rifle on me with ominously shaking hands. I stopped where I stood and waited while Mrs. Pule took Hasbro's revolver away from him. So much for that.

  They marched us back through the ice room, the floor of which was wet and mucky with meltwater and sopping hay, and smelled like an ammoniated swamp. I was desperately cold all of a sudden, and thought about how unpleasant it was to have to face death when you were shaking with cold and dead tired and it was past three in the morning. The night had been one long round of wild escapes, followed by my striding back into various lion's dens and tipping my hat. There was no chance of another go at it now, though, with one of them in front and one behind.

  St. Ives started right in, as soon as he saw Narbondo lying there on the table. He felt for a pulse, nodded, and raised one of the doctor's eyelids. Next he examined the bladder apparatus and sniffed the elixir, and then, as if it was the most natural and unpretentious thing in the world, he slipped the bottle of elixir into his coat pocket.

  "Out with it!" hissed the woman, tipping the revolver against my head. My eyes shot open in order to better watch St. Ives remove the bottle.

  "Wake him up," she said, removing the revolver from my temple and gesturing toward the sleeping doctor.

  St. Ives shook his head. "I'd love to," he said. "But I don't know how. It would be the happiest day of my life if I could animate him in order that he be brought to justice."

  She laughed out loud. "Them's my words," she said, referring to that day in Godall's shop. "Justice! We'll bring him justice, won't we, Willis?"

  Willis nodded, wild with happiness now—partly, I thought, because of St. Ives's insisting that the doctor couldn't be awakened. Pule didn't want him awake. He picked up his bag of instruments and set it on the table. When he opened it, I could smell burnt rubber, and sure enough, he pulled out the hacked and charred fragments of the toy elephant and the little collection of gears, put back together now. "This is what I did to his elephant," he said, nodding at me, but looking at Higgins.

  "Elephant?" Higgins said, casting me a terrified and wondering glance. This obscure reference to the elephant must have struck him as significant in some unfathomable way, largely because what Pule held in his hand no longer had anything to do with elephants. It was simply a limp bit of flayed rubber and paint.

  I shrugged at Higgins and started to speak to the poor man, but Willis cut me off, shouting, "Shut up!" in a lunatic falsetto and blinking very fast and hard. He wasn't interested in hearing from me. He was caught up in his own twisted story, and he happily set about laying out an array of operating instruments—scalpels and clamps and something that looked a little like a bolt cutters and a little like a pruning shears and was meant, I guess, for clipping bone.

  He made a bow in our direction, and, gesturing at Nar-bondo, he said, as if he were addressing a half score of students in a surgery, "I intend to affix this man's head to the fat man's body, and then to wake him up and make him look at himself in a mirror and see how ugly he is. Then I'm going to install this mechanism"—and here he plucked up the reassembled gears from the elephant—"in his heart, so that I can control him with a lever. And this man," Pule said, pointing at poor terrified and befuddled Higgins, "I'm going to cut apart and put together backward, so that he has to reach behind himself to button his shirt, and then I'm going to sell him to Mr. Happy's Circus."

  Pule was madder than I thought him. What on earth did he mean by nonsense like "put him together backward"? It was clear that he could actually accomplish none of this. What real evidence was there that he had any skills in vivisection at all? None, and never had been—only his association with Nar-bondo, which proved nothing, of course, except that he was capable of committing vile acts. He was simply going to hack three men up—two of them alive at the moment—for the same utterly insane reasons that he had hacked up my elephant or that he chopped apart birds and hid them under the floorboards of his house. And he would do it all with relish—I was certain of it.

  Poor Higgins was even more certain, it seemed, for just as soon as Pule mentioned this business about selling him to Mr. Happy's Circus, he began to utter a sort of low keening noise, a strange and mournful weeping. His eyes rolled back up into his head just as he slumped forward, tugging at the gaiters that held him to the chair, his voice rising another octave.

  Mrs. Pule handed Willis the revolver, and he shifted the rifle to his left hand, not wanting to put it down. She picked up the dish of yellow chemical and advised Higgins to pipe down. But he couldn't, and so she splashed the stuff into Higgins's face, at which Higgins lurched upright, spitting and coughing, and she slapped him one, catching him mostly on the nose because of his twitching around. "Did you hear him?'' she hissed.

  "What! What! What!" cried Higgins, out of his mind now.

  "You can save yourself," she said. "Or else ..." She hunched over and whispered the rest of the sentence in his ear.

  "Merciful Jesus! I'm what?" he shouted. "You're going to what? Mr. Happy!" His voice cracked. He began to gibber and moan.

  They had gone too far. She had wanted to bargain with him, but she had made the mistake of driving him mad first, and now he was beyond bargaining. So she hit him again, twice—slap, slap—and he sat up straight and listened harder.

  "The notebooks," she said. "Where are they?"

  St. Ives cleared his throat, and very cheerfully, as if he were talking to a neighbor over the garden wall, he said, "I don't believe that the man knows ..."

  "Shut up!" she cried, turning on the three of us.

  "Shut up!" cried her son, rapidly opening and closing his eyes and training the revolver on me, of all people; / hadn't said anything. I shrugged, very willing to shut up.

  St. Ives was a different kettle of fish. "I mean to say, madam," he said, calmly and deliberately, "that Professor Higgins is utterly ignorant of the whereabouts of the notebooks. It was he who posted that letter to you, after he had revived the doctor. And since then he hasn't found them, although he's made a very pretty effort. Your torturing him now won't accomplish a thing, unless, as I suspect, you're torturing him for sport."

  "You filthy . . .," she said, leaving it unfinished, and in a wild rage she snatched the revolver away from her son and pointed it at the professor. "You scum-sucking pig! You know nothing. I'll start with you, Mr. Hooknose, and then Willis will make a scarecrow of you."

  She croaked out a laugh just as I lunged at her; don't ask me why I did it—making up for lost opportunities, maybe. I threw myself onto the revolver and grabbed it by the barrel, hitting her just as hard as I could on the jaw, which was plenty hard enough to knock her over backward.

  Willis grappled with the rifle, but hadn't gotten it halfway up before Hasbro clipped him neatly on the side of the head, and he sank to his knees and slumped forward.

  It was over, just like that. I'd had to hit a woman to accomplish it, but by heaven I would hit her once more, harder, if I had it to do again.

  "Go for the constable. Jack," cried St. Ives, taking the revolver from me. "Bring him round, quick. I won't leave Narbondo's side, not until he's in a cell, sleeping or awake, I don't care."

  I turned and started out, but didn't take more than a step, for the canvas pulled back, and there stood the constable himself, the one that had questioned me on the green, and Parsons stood with him, along with two sleepy-looking men who had obviously been routed out as deputies. For it had been Parsons who was lurking about, waiting for his chance. When it had got rough, and he had realized what a spot we had got ourselves int
o, he had himself run for the constable, and here they were, come round to save us now that we didn't want saving.

  "I'll just take those weapons," said the constable, very officiously.

  "Certainly," said St. Ives, handing over the revolver as if it were a snake.

  Then there was a lot of talk about Narbondo, on the table, and a fetching of more ice, and a cataloging of the bits and pieces of scientific apparatus, and finally St. Ives couldn't stand it any longer and he asked Parsons, "The notebooks. You've got them, haven't you?"

  Parsons shrugged.

  "It was Piper, wasn't it? The oculist. He had got them from the old man, and had them all along. And when he died you came down and fetched them."

  "Accurate to the last detail," said Parsons, smiling to think that at last he'd put one across St. Ives, that at last he had been in ahead of us. "What you don't know, my good fellow, is that I've destroyed them. They were a horror, a misapplication of scientific method, an abomination. I burned them in Dr. Piper's incinerator without bothering to read more than a snatch of them."

  "Then it's my view," said St. Ives, "that Narbondo is dead, or as good as dead. How long he can last in this suspended state, I don't know, but it's clear that Higgins couldn't entirely revive him. Neither can I, and without the notebooks, thank God, neither can you."

  Parsons shrugged again. "Keep him on ice," he said to the constable. "The Academy will want him. He'll make an interesting study."

  The use of the word study had a Willis Pule ring to it that I didn't like, and I was reminded of what it was about Parsons that set the men of the Academy apart from a man like St. Ives.

  I was almost sorry that Narbondo at last had fallen into their hands.

  St. Ives, however, didn't seem in the least sorry. "I suggest we retire to the Crown and Apple, then," he said. "I have a few bottles of ale in my room. I suggest that we sample it— toast Professor Parsons's success."

  "Here, here," said Parsons, a little vainly, I thought, as we trooped out into the night, leaving the icehouse behind. In fact, though, a couple of bottles of ale and a few hours of sleep would settle me right out. Our adventure was over, and tomorrow, I supposed, it was back to London on the express. I patted my coat pocket, where I still had the proof of my reserving a room for me and Dorothy at The Hoisted Pint. You'd think that I would have had my fill of the place, but in fact I was determined to stay there as I'd planned, under happier circumstances, especially since whoever it was that we would find tending to the guests, it wouldn't be the woman who had hoodwinked me. The constable had already sent someone around to collect her.

  SO THERE WE WERE, sitting in St. Ives's room, and him passing around opened bottles of ale, until he got to Parsons and said, "You're strictly a water man, aren't you?"

  "You've got an admirable memory, sir. Water is the staff of life, the staff of life."

  "And I've got a bottle of well water right here," said St. Ives, uncorking just such an object. Parsons was delighted. He took the glass that St. Ives gave him and swirled the water around in it, as if it were Scotch or Burgundy or some other drinkable substance. Then he threw it down heartily and smacked his lips like a connoisseur, immediately wrinkling up his face.

  "Bitter," he said. "Must be French. Lucky I'm thirsty after tonight's little tussle." He held out his glass.

  "Mineral water," said St. Ives, filling it up.

  I was tempted to say something about "tonight's little tussle" myself, but I put a lid on it. Hasbro had fallen asleep in his chair.

  Parsons winked at the professor. He was as full of himself as I've ever seen him. "About revivifying Narbondo," he said. "I've got a notion involving Lord Kelvin's machine. You've read of Sir Joseph John Thomson's work at the Cavendish Laboratory."

  St. Ives's face betrayed what he was thinking, as if he had known that it would come to this, and here it was at last. "Yes," he said, "I have. Very interesting, but I don't quite see how it applies."

  This made Parsons happy. To hear St. Ives admit such a thing was worth a lifetime of waiting and plotting. He had the face of a man holding four aces and looking at a table mounded with coin. "Electrons," he said, as if such a word explained everything.

  "Go on," said the professor.

  "Well, it's rather simple, isn't it? They spin sphere-wise around their atom. An intense electromagnetic field yanks them into a sort of oval, rather like the shifting of tides on the earth, and in animate creatures causes immediate and unrestrained cellular activity. What if Narbondo were subjected to such a force—a tremendous dose of electromagnetism? It might —how shall I put it?—'start him up,' let's say, like turning over an Otto's four-stroke engine."

  "It might," said St. Ives darkly. "It might do a good deal more. I'll get directly to the point here; this isn't a matter for dalliance. The Academy undertook to start that damnable machine once, and to be straight with you, I had my man sabotage it. Do you remember?"

  Of course Parsons remembered. It had been the incident of Lord Kelvin's machine that had caused the deepening of the chasm between the two men. Parsons looked almost sneery for a moment and said, "He loaded the contrivance with field mice, if I remember aright. Very effective, if a little bit—what? —primitive, maybe."

  "Well," continued St. Ives, going right on, "some few of those field mice lived to tell the tale, as my friend Jack might put it. I carried on a study of them for almost two years in the fields round about the manor, until I was certain, finally, that the last of those poor creatures was dead, and what I discovered was a remarkably horrendous syndrome of mutations and cancers. It's my theory quite simply that this 'unrestrained cellular activity,' as you put it, is more likely ungovernable cellular growth. Your engine analogy may or may not apply. It doesn't matter. You simply cannot start the machine for any purpose, especially for something as frivolous as this. Leave Narbondo's fate in the hands of the Almighty, for heaven's sake."

  "Frivolous!" shouted Parsons. "I don't give a rap for Narbondo's fate. Imagine, though, what this will mean. Here's poor Higgins, who has devoted a lifetime to the study of cryogenics. Here's Narbondo and a lifetime's study of chemistry. He was a monster, certainly, but so what? You must be a pitifully shortsighted scientist if you can't see the effect the sum total of their work will have on the future of the human race. And it's Lord Kelvin's machine that will usher in that future. To put it simply, my ship is putting in and I mean to board her." Parsons struck the arm of his chair with his fist to punctuate his speech. Then his eyes half closed and his head nodded forward. He shook himself awake and mumbled something about being suddenly sleepy, and then his head fell against his chest and straightaway he began to snore through his beard, having said, apparently, all he had to say.

  The sight of him sleeping so profoundly put me in mind of my own bed, and I was just yawning and starting to say that I would turn in too, when St. Ives leaped to his feet, dropped an already-prepared letter into Parsons's lap and cried out, "It's time!" Then he roused Hasbro, who himself leaped up and headed straight for the door.

  "Coming or not, Jacky?" asked the professor. "Why, coming, I suppose. Where? Now?" "To the Dover Strait. You can sleep on board." With that he rushed into Parsons's room, coming back out with a bundle of the man's clothes, and I found myself following them through the night—out the backdoor of the inn, down along the seawall, and clambering into the tethered rowboat. Hasbro unshipped the oars and we were away, through the patchy fog, dipping along until the shadowy hull of a small steam trawler rose out of the mists ahead of us. We thunked into the side of her and clambered aboard, then winched up the rowboat after us. Up came the anchor, and I found myself saying hello to Hasbro's stalwart Aunt Edie and to the grizzled Uncle Botley, pilot of the trawler. Roped onto a little barge behind us rested the diving bell that we had stolen earlier that very night from the icehouse.

  St. Ives had drugged poor Parsons. The water bottle had been doctored, and Parsons, in the joy of his victory, had swallowed enough of it to make him
sleep for half a day. We would get into the Strait before him, towing the bell, and when we did . . .

  Parsons Bids Us Adieu

  WE FOUND THE WATERS around the submerged machine alive with a half-dozen ships, all of them at anchor a good distance away. They had attached a buoy directly to it, to track it so as to avoid either losing it or coming too near it. We showed no hesitation at all, but steamed right up to the line. That was where I played my part, and played it tolerably well, I think.

  Up onto the deck I came, wearing an enormous white beard and wig and dressed in Parsons's clothes, which St. Ives had stolen from his room at the Apple. St. Ives stayed hidden; his face would excite suspicion in any of a number of people. He coached me, though, from inside a cabin, and together we bluffed our way through that line of ships with a lot of what sounded to me like convincing talk about having learned how to "disarm" the machine and having brought along a diving bell for the purpose.

  Anyway, certain that I was Parsons, they let us through right enough, and we navigated as close to the buoy as we dared, then set out in the rowboat, towing the barge with the bell standing straddle-legged atop the deck, the jib crane attached to the barge now with brass carriage bolts, its chain pulled off and replaced entirely with heavy line. We would have to be quick, though. Uncle Botley had removed as much iron from the rowboat and barge as he could manage, but there was still the chance that if we didn't look sharp, the machine would start to tug out nails and would scuttle us.

  Hasbro and I manned the oars—work that I was admirably suited to from my days of punting on the Thames. They must have been surprised, though, to see old Parsons hauling away like that, given that he was upward of eighty-five years old. The idea of it amused me, and I pulled all the harder, watching over my shoulder as we drew slowly nearer to the buoy.