Around the World in 100 Days

by Gary Blackwood

  “Bully beef!” Johnny called from beneath the motorcar, where he was installing a new oil line.

  “Is that a new form of cursing?” said Harry. “Or did you want me to buy some?”

  “Buy some.”

  “You mean the sort in tins?” Harry grimaced. “I don’t like it.”

  “I do.”

  “Well, that’s fine. But I’m getting food for the trip, and you’re not coming.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Harry knelt and peered under the car. “I’m the one who tells the jokes around here.”

  “’Tis no joke.”

  “Johnny, it was I who made the bet. You’re not obliged to help me. This trip won’t be any picnic, you know. There’s not much in the way of roads, and precious few hotels or pubs. I’ll be driving ten to fifteen hours a day and sleeping in the car, or in a tent, in all sorts of weather. It’ll be dirty and miserable and exhausting.”

  Johnny turned his head to look at Harry. “So,” he said, “why should you have all the fun?”

  Harry sat back on his heels and scratched his head. “You know, now that I think about it, it might not be a bad idea. She’s a fine car, but she’s bound to have problems sooner or later, and I may not always be able to fix them. The only thing is . . . I mean, do you think . . . that is, are you certain you’re up to it?”

  “I’m certain.”

  “It’s just that sometimes you have those . . . spells.”

  “I’m certain!” shouted Johnny, so vehemently that Harry flinched. After a minute or two, he heard his friend murmur, “I’m sorry. You said she’s my motorcar, too. I should get to go.”

  “No need to apologize. You’re quite right. You should get to go, and go you shall.” Harry got to his feet. “How much bully beef do you want?”

  Before Johnny could reply, there was a knock at the door of the shed. “Who could that be?” Harry lifted the latch and swung the door open to find three gentlemen in morning coats and bowler hats, looking wholly out of place in these rather shabby surroundings. One was a stranger to Harry, a blond youth of about his size and age. The others were all too familiar. “Mr. Sullivan. Mr. Hardiman. What brings you to York Court?”

  Sullivan the banker took a long Havana cigar from between his teeth and blew a ring of smoke. “We thought we’d have a look at this motorcar of yours.”

  “I see. You’re wondering whether there’s any chance I might actually win, is that it?”

  “Not at all,” said Hardiman irritably. “We merely wanted to make certain you’d be ready within the week, as agreed.”

  “Oh, we’ll be ready. As for whether or not you may look her over, I’ll have to ask Mr. Shaugnessey.” He called to Johnny, “The men who made the wager are here. Is it all right if they examine the Flash?”

  “I guess,” grumbled Johnny. “Don’t let them touch nothing.”

  “You may look but not touch,” Harry told the visitors. The three slowly circled the vehicle, doing their best not to brush against the assorted parts that leaned against the walls or step on the tools and piles of oily rags that littered the floor.

  “I must say,” the railroad man grudgingly admitted, “she’s built far better than I expected.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Mind you, I still don’t believe she’ll make it around the world. If you’re lucky, you might get across the United States. But you’d better take along a lot of spare parts.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Hardiman shoved aside a pile of filthy rags with the polished tip of one shoe and approached Harry. “Good. I know machines, and I know what I’m talking about. Here’s another piece of advice. If you should by some miracle manage to reach Asia, take the shortest possible land route from there. If I were you, I’d catch a steamer to Hong Kong and go across southern China and northern India. That should cut nearly a thousand miles off your journey.”

  “I see. But why are you telling me this, sir? I should think it would be in your best interest for us to take as long a route as possible.”

  “Because,” put in Sullivan, “we want you to have every chance to succeed, so that when you lose, there will be no excuses, no crying foul.”

  “There will not be, I assure you. Now, if you will excuse me, gentlemen, I am on my way to purchase equipment and supplies for the trip.”

  “Before you go,” said the railroad man, “let me introduce my son, Charles Hardiman.”

  Harry shook the blond youth’s hand cordially. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.” The boy’s handshake was limp and his palm felt cold against Harry’s.

  “Likewise,” said Charles with a slight lisp, but without the least hint of pleasure. He withdrew his hand, glanced at it, then rubbed at his palm with a handkerchief.

  “I’ve talked it over with your father,” said Julius Hardiman, “and we feel it would be best if you took along an impartial observer.”

  Harry stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Charles will be going with you, to make certain there are no . . . infractions, shall we say? No bending of the rules?”

  “I agreed to the terms,” Harry said, heatedly. “I gave you my word!”

  “When your father made his famous wager, he also agreed to the terms. But apparently there was some question as to whether or not he lived up to them.”

  “He showed up at the Reform Club on the specified date!”

  “That’s true,” said Sullivan. “He did circle the globe in eighty calendar days. But only because he crossed the international date line and thus gained a day. The fact remains, the actual elapsed time was eighty-one days.”

  Harry felt his fists clenching, and he thrust them in his pockets. “Well, you needn’t worry, sir, because I’ll be traveling west, so I’ll actually be losing a day.”

  “That’s not such an important issue, here, since you have more time,” said Hardiman. “Our main concern is that the motorcar go the entire distance under its own power. To make certain of that, we need to have an observer aboard.”

  “An impartial observer, you said. What reason do I have to believe that your son would be impartial?”

  “You have my word on it,” said Charles coolly.

  “Oh, so my word isn’t good enough, but yours is?”

  “Your father has already agreed to this,” said Hardiman, “so I’m afraid it’s all settled.”

  “He had no right to speak for me! This is my wager!”

  “Ah, but you had no money to back it up.”

  Though Harry was seething, he managed to say, in a fairly civil tone, “Perhaps you should leave, now. We have a good deal of work to do, and you might get your fine clothing dirty.”

  As Harry strode up the street toward Fortnum & Mason’s department store, he caught sight of another figure he thought he recognized. When he stopped and turned to make certain, the man disappeared down a side street. Harry went on, reciting under his breath a litany of ungentlemanly things he should have said to that lobster-faced midget, Hardiman, and his foppish son, and to that smirking money-grubber, Sullivan.

  An hour later he returned, this time riding in a hackney and surrounded by crates and packages—a veritable cornucopia of tinned meats, soups, and milk, plus a variety of desiccated fruits and vegetables. Selecting these supplies would have taken most people an entire day; Harry had simply snatched up a bit of this and a bit of that. He had also bought a splendid sports knife that could be transformed into a variety of useful tools, including a screwdriver, a saw, scissors, an awl, a file, a corkscrew, and a drill.

  As they drew near the blacksmith shop, the driver shouted, “Cor! There’s summat afire up ahead!”

  Harry thrust his head out the cab window. Roiling clouds of black smoke were rising from the vicinity of the shop. “Drive on!” he ordered. “Quickly!” He had the door open and was leaping from the cab before it rolled to a stop. He dashed around to the rear of the shop to see one corner of the shed engulfed in flame
s. “Find a fire station or an alarm box!” he called to the cabdriver.

  “What’ll I do wiv your purchases, then?”

  “Never mind that! Just go!”

  The door of the shed flew open and Johnny stumbled out, coughing. “The Flash! We got to save her!”

  “Come on, then!” Harry yanked a handkerchief from his vest pocket. Covering his nose and mouth, he plunged into the smoky interior. Luckily, all the car’s wheels were currently attached. Harry began pushing the vehicle, only to jerk his hands away as the hot metal seared his skin. He put one shoulder against the car and heaved. For all their efforts to make the Flash as light as possible, it was no featherweight. Harry couldn’t budge it.

  He glanced furtively at half a dozen metal cans filled with kerosene, which they’d been using for fuel. If the flames reached those, the shed and everything in it would be incinerated instantly. He seized one of the cans and flung it through the nearest window.

  Johnny appeared beside him, a filthy rag pressed to his face. Together they tossed out the rest of the kerosene cans, then turned to the car. Just above their heads, the roof rafters were ablaze. “On three!” called Harry. “One! Two! Three!”

  The Flash rocked forward slightly, then settled back. “Again! One! Two! Three!” It still refused to move.

  “The gear stick!” said Johnny.

  Harry groaned. He hadn’t checked to see whether the driving gear was engaged. He flung himself over the top of the passenger door and whacked the gear stick painfully with one hand until it disengaged. At once, the Flash began to roll.

  Just as they got it through the doorway, part of the shed roof collapsed, so close behind them that sparks stung the back of Harry’s neck. “Keep going!” he cried. “Get her as far away as possible!” Ahead was a board fence that marked the edge of the adjoining property. They mowed it down and kept pushing until the front bumper rammed up against the neighbor’s privy.

  The friends sank to the ground, drawing ragged breaths punctuated by racking coughs. Through his own wheezing, Harry heard the sound of a clanging bell. “The fire brigade,” he gasped.

  “Too late.” Johnny nodded toward the shed. The remainder of the roof caved in, sending up an enormous billow of greasy smoke. The horse-drawn fire wagon drew up before the blacksmith shop; firemen scrambled to hook up the hand-operated pump and direct a jet of water onto the flames.

  “Did we lose anything crucial?” asked Harry.

  Johnny stopped sucking on his burned fingers long enough to reply, “My tools.”

  “Those can be replaced. We saved the Flash; that’s the important thing. And you, of course. Do you have any idea how it started?”

  Johnny shrugged. “Oily rags?”

  “Something had to set them off. You weren’t using the acetylene torch?”

  “No.”

  “And you weren’t smoking your pipe?”

  “No.”

  Harry stared at the smoldering ruin. “Wait a moment. I know who was smoking—Sullivan. When he arrived, he had a cigar. I don’t recall seeing it when he left.”

  “You think he did it a-purpose?”

  “There’s no way of knowing. He and Hardiman seemed surprised that the Flash was so well built; perhaps they realized we might actually win, and decided to destroy our chances by destroying the car. However ...” Harry paused to think. “It is possible that the culprit may have been someone else altogether. Did you see anyone skulking around after I left?”

  Johnny shook his head.

  “Did you leave the shed at all?”

  “I went to the privy.”

  “That might have given him enough time.”

  “Who?”

  “As I was heading up Baker Street earlier, I thought I caught a glimpse of someone I know. Or, more accurately, someone my father knows. Someone who hates my father—and by extension, our whole family—so much that I suspect he’d jump at any chance to strike back at us.”

  “Who?” repeated Johnny.

  “His name is Andrew Stuart.”

  SIX In which

  AOUDA FOGG REVEALS AN UNPLEASANT SECRET FROM HER PAST

  The cabman returned with Harry’s supplies and drove him home. Harry had meant to have it out with his father over this “impartial observer” business. But, though the boy’s temper could flare up quickly, it died down almost as quickly. There was really no point in arguing the matter, anyway. Once Phileas Fogg made up his mind about something, he was like the Flash with its gears engaged—immovable.

  His mother tended to his burned hands, smearing them carefully with salve and binding them with gauze. “Now perhaps you will call off this trip of yours,” she said.

  “Of course not. Why would I?”

  “Because it is dangerous!” she said, so sharply that Harry blinked in surprise. “You might have been killed!”

  “The fire was an accident, Mother.” Well, it could have been an accident. There was no proof that it had been set deliberately. “It had nothing to do with the trip.”

  “Well, in any case, how will you drive a motorcar with your hands like this?”

  Harry shrugged. “I’ll manage. I’ll wear heavy gloves. Besides, Johnny can do some of the driving.”

  “Why do you not hire a driver, as your father suggested—someone more experienced?”

  “Motorcars are such a new invention, I’m afraid no one has much experience driving them. Besides, with Johnny and Charles Hardiman aboard, we’d scarcely have room for another person.”

  “You do not mind taking the Hardiman boy?”

  “I’m not thrilled by the prospect. He’s rather a cold fish.”

  “I hope you two will get along. He was here with his father. He seems a pleasant enough boy, and very well mannered. Perhaps it will do you good to spend some time with him.”

  “Maybe some of his fine manners will rub off on me, you mean?”

  Aouda gave a wry smile. “I would not mind if they did. Nor, I suspect, would your father. However, the real reason he agreed to let Charles Hardiman go along was to avoid any misunderstanding as to whether or not the rules were followed.”

  Harry threw up his hands, then winced at the pain it caused. “So Father thinks I’m going to cheat as well?”

  “Of course not. He only wants to be certain that you will not be accused of it.”

  “Why don’t those men trust me? I agreed to their rules. We shook hands on it. Father always says that an English gentleman’s word is his bond, but it doesn’t seem to be good enough for them.”

  “I think that perhaps . . . perhaps they do not quite consider you an English gentleman.”

  Harry laughed. “Why? Because I couldn’t make the grade at Eton? Because I have dirt under my fingernails? Because I’m not a Little Lord Fauntleroy, like Charles Hardiman?”

  “Those things may be a part of it. But I believe that the main reason is your heritage.”

  “You mean . . . because I’m half Indian?”

  She nodded.

  The notion took Harry by surprise. Not that he was any stranger to prejudice. In his younger years, he had thrashed at least half a dozen boys for calling him or his mother a “wog.” That was one reason he took to playing with the working-class lads. They didn’t know much about his background, and didn’t particularly care, as long as he could kick a football. At Eton, he had not bothered to mention that his mother came from India, and his skin was light enough that no one was likely to guess.

  After years of fitting in, of feeling no different from any other well-bred English lad, it was something of a shock to find that, in the eyes of the people he considered his peers, he was still somehow inferior, and not to be trusted.

  It suddenly occurred to him that his mother must face that same attitude each time she left her house, and had no doubt done so ever since her arrival in England twenty years before. He had always wondered why she went out so little, why she had so few friends—only a half-dozen artists and musicians who were considered too
Bohemian for polite society.

  Aside from Mr. Gandhi, a law student who was a distant relation and who sometimes took dinner with them, she made little effort to associate with London’s sizable Indian population. In fact, she seemed at times to be deliberately avoiding her countrymen. Harry supposed that this was her way of trying to protect him; she was fiercely determined that he should be as English as possible.

  “You know,” said Aouda, “that I am unhappy about your making this trip.”

  “Yes, but—”

  She held up a hand to silence him. “However, I have not told you the true reason.” And she did not tell him now. After a pause, she said, “Have you decided what route you will take?”

  “We’ll land in New York, drive the most direct route to San Francisco, then take a steamer to Asia.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, Mr. Hardiman said we would cut a thousand miles off the journey if we drove across southern China and northern India.”

  Aouda nodded solemnly. “That is what I feared.”

  “Feared? What is there to fear about it?”

  “Your father told me that, when he was traveling around the world, the newspapers all printed reports of his progress. Will the same happen with your trip?”

  “I suppose so. It’s the first time anyone’s tried to take a motorcar around the world, after all.”

  “Then people in India will read about it, in the English papers.”

  “So?”

  She sighed heavily. “I have never spoken of this to anyone but your father. Now I suppose I must. You know that I grew up in Bombay.”

  “Yes.”

  “When I was little older than you, my parents died and my cousin arranged a marriage for me, to a wealthy prince from the province of Bundelkund. This may not sound like such an awful fate, but the man was three times my age. He died within a year and, to make certain I would inherit none of his fortune, his family conspired to be rid of me.