Blaylock, James P - Langdon St Ives 02 (26 page)

 
          
 
"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 into, 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 . . .

           
 
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.