Blaylock, James P - Langdon St Ives 02 (4 page)

 
          
 
He wouldn't have been half so agreeable if he
knew that Narbondo had no intention of destroying anything, that his motivation
was greed—greed and revenge. His threat to cast the earth forcibly into the
path of the approaching comet wouldn't be taken lightly. There were those in
the
Royal
Academy
who knew he could do it, who supposed, no
doubt, that he might quite likely do it. They were as shortsighted as
Hargreaves and every bit as useful. Narbondo had worked devilishly hard over
the years at making
himself
feared, loathed, and,
ultimately, respected.

 
          
 
The surprising internal eruption of
Mount
Hjarstaad
would throw the fear into them. They'd be
quaking over their breakfasts at that very moment, the lot of them wondering
and gaping. Beards would be wagging. Dark suspicions would be mouthed. Where
was Narbondo? Had he been seen in
London
? Not for months. He had threatened this
very thing, hadn't he?—
an
eruption above the
Arctic Circle
, just to demonstrate the seriousness of his
intent, the degree to which he held the fate of the world in his hands.

 
          
 
Very soon—within days—the comet would pass
close enough to the earth to provide a spectacular display for the
masses—foolish creatures. The iron core of the thing might easily be pulled so
solidly by the earth's magnetic field that the comet would hurtle groundward,
slamming the poor old earth into atoms and all the gaping multitudes with it.
What if, Nar-bondo had suggested, what if a man were to give the earth a push,
to propel it even closer to the approaching star and so turn a long shot into a
dead cert, as a blade of the turf might put it? And with that, the art of
extortion had been elevated to a new plane.

 
          
 
Well, Dr. Ignacio Narbondo was that man. Could
he do it? Narbondo grinned. His advertisement of two weeks past had drawn a
sneer from the
Royal
Academy
, but
Mount
Hjarstaad
would wipe the sneers from their faces.
They would wax grave. Their grins would set like plaster of Paris. What had the
poet said about that sort of thing? "Gravity was a mysterious carriage of
the body to cover the defects of the mind.'' That was it. Gravity would answer
for a day or two, but when it faded into futility they would pay, and pay well.
Narbondo set in to whistle again, this time out of the innocence of good cheer,
but the effect on Hargreaves was so immediately consumptive and maddening that
Narbondo gave it off abruptly. There was no use baiting the man into ruination
before the job was done.

 
          
 
He thought suddenly of Langdon St. Ives. St.
Ives was nearly unavoidable. For the fiftieth time Narbondo regretted killing
the woman on that rainy
London
morning one year past. He hadn't meant to. He had meant to bargain with
her life. It was desperation had made him sloppy and wild. It seemed to him
that he could count his mistakes on the fingers of one hand. When he made them,
though, they weren't subtle mistakes. The best he could hope for was that St.
Ives had sensed the desperation in him, that St. Ives lived day-to-day with the
knowledge that if he had only eased up, if he hadn't pushed Narbondo so
closely, hadn't forced his hand, the woman might be alive today, and the two of
them, St. Ives and her, Hving bhssfully together, pottering in the turnip
garden. Narbondo watched the back of Hargreaves's head. If it was a just world,
then St. Ives would blame himself. He was precisely the man for such a job as
that—a martyr of the suffering type. The very thought of St. Ives made him
scowl, though. Narbondo had been careful, but somehow the
Dover
air seemed to whisper "St. Ives"
to him at every turning. He pushed his suspicions out of his mind, reached for
his coat, and stepped silently from the room, carrying his teacup with him. On
the morning street outside he smiled grimly at the orange sun that burned
through the evaporating fog, then he threw the dregs of his tea, cup and all,
over a vine-draped stone wall and strode away east up
Archcliffe Road
, composing in his mind a letter to the
Royal
Academy
.

 
          
 
"
damn
me!"
mumbled Bill Kraken through the fingers mashed against his mouth. He wiped away
furiously at the tea leaves and tea that ran down his neck and collar. The cup
that had hit him on the ear had fallen and broken on the stones of the garden.
He peered up over the wall at Narbondo's diminishing figure and added this last
unintended insult to the list of villainies he had suffered over the years at
Narbondo's hands.

 
          
 
He would have his turn yet. Why St. Ives
hadn't given him leave merely to beat the stuffing out of this devil Hargreaves
Kraken couldn't at all fathom. The man was a monster; there was no gainsaying
it. They could easily set off one of his own devices—hoist him on his own
filthy petard, so to speak. His remains would be found amid the wreckage of
infernal machines, built with his own hands. The world would have owed Bill
Kraken a debt.

 
          
 
But Narbondo, St. Ives had insisted, would
have found another willing accomplice. Hargreaves was only a pawn, and pawns
could be dealt with easily enough when the time came. St. Ives couldn't afford
to tip his hand, nor would he settle for anything less than fair play and
lawful justice. That was the crux of it. St. Ives had developed a passion for
keeping the Winders on his motivations. He would be driven by law and reason
and not fuddle things up with the odd emotion. Sometimes the man was scarcely
human.

 
          
 
Kraken crouched out from behind the wall and
slipped away in Narbondo's wake, keeping to the other side of the road when the
hunchback entered a stationer's, then circling round to the back when Narbondo
went in at the post office door. Kraken stepped through a dark, arched rear
entry, a ready lie on his lips in case he was confronted. He found himself in a
small deserted room, where he slid behind a convenient heap of crates, peeping
through slats at an enormously fat, stooped man who lumbered in and tossed
Narbondo's letter into a wooden bin before lumbering back out. Kraken snatched
up the letter, tucked it into his coat, and in a moment was back in the
sunlight, prying at the sealing wax with his index fmger. Ten minutes later he
was at the front door of the post office, grinning into the wide face of the
postman and mailing Narbondo's missive for the second time that morning.

 
          
 
“SURELY it's a bluff," Said Jack Owlesby,
scowling at Langdon St. Ives. The four of them sat on lawn chairs in the
Gardens, listening with half an ear to the lackluster tootings of a tired
orchestra. "What would it profit him to alert the Times? There'd be
mayhem. If it's extortion he's up to, this won't further his aim by an
inch."

 
          
 
"The threat of it might," replied
St. Ives. "If his promise to pitch the earth into the path of the comet
weren't taken seriously, the mere suggestion that the public be apprised of the
magnetic affinity of the comet and the earth might be.
Extortion
on top of extortion.
The one is pale alongside the other one. I grant
you that. But there could be a panic if an ably stated message were to reach
the right sort of journalist—or the wrong sort, rather." St. Ives paused
and shook his head, as if such panic wasn't to be contemplated. "What was
the name of that scoundrel who leaked the news of the threatened epidemic four
years ago?"

           
 
"Beezer, sir," said Hasbro.
"He's still in the employ of the Times, and, we must suppose, no less likely
to be in communication with the doctor today than he was then. He would be your
man, sir, if you wanted to wave the bloody shirt."

 
          
 
"I rather believe," said St. Ives,
grimacing at the raucous climax of an unidentifiable bit of orchestration,
"that we should pay this man Beezer a visit. We can't do a thing sitting
around
Dover
. Narbondo has agreed to wait four days for
a reply from the Academy. There's no reason to believe that he won't keep his
word—he's got nothing to gain by haste. The comet, after all, is ten days off.
We've got to suppose that he means just what he claims. Evil begets idiocy,
gentlemen, and there is no earthly way to tell how far down the path into
degeneration our doctor has trod.
The next train to
London
, Hasbro?"

 
          
 
"Two-forty-five,
sir."

 
          
 
"We'll be aboard her."

 
          
 
THE BAYSWATER CLUB, owned by the Royal Academy
of Sciences, sat across from
Kensington
Gardens
, commanding a view of trimmed lawns and
roses and cleverly pruned trees. St. Ives peered out the window on the second
floor of the club, satisfied with what he saw. The sun loomed like an immense
orange just below the zenith, and the radiant heat glancing through the
geminate windows of the club felt almost alive. The April weather was so
altogether pleasant that it came near to making up for the fearful lunch that
would at any moment arrive to stare at St. Ives from a china plate. He had
attempted a bit of cheerful banter with the stony-faced waiter, ordering dirt
cutlets and beer as a joke, but the man hadn't seen the humor in it. What he
had seen had been evident on his face.

 
          
 
St. Ives sighed and wished heartily that he
was taking the sun along with the multitudes in the park, but the thought that
a week hence there mightn't be any park at all—or any multitudes, either—sobered
him, and he drained the bottom half of a glass of claret. He regarded the man
seated across from him. Parsons, the ancient secretary of the
Royal
Academy
, spooned up broth with an enthusiasm that
left St. Ives tired. Floating on the surface of the broth were what appeared to
be twisted little bugs, but must have been some sort of Oriental mushroom,
sprinkled on by a chef with a sense of humor. Parsons chased them with his
spoon.

 
          
 
"So you've nothing at all to fear,"
said Parsons, dabbing at his chin with a napkin. He grimaced at St. Ives in a
satisfied way, like a proud doggy
who
had fetched in
the slippers without tearing holes in them. "The greatest minds in the
scientific world are at work on the problem. The comet will sail past us with
no commotion whatsoever. It's a matter of electromagnetic forces, really. The
comet might easily be drawn to the earth, as you say, with disastrous
consequences. Unless, let's imagine, if we can push ourselves so far, the
earth's magnetic field were to be forcibly suspended."

 
          
 
"Suspended?"

 
          
 
"Shut off.
Current
interruptus."
Parsons winked.

 
          
 
"Shut off? Lunacy," St. Ives said.
"Sheer lunacy."

 
          
 
"It's not unknown to have happened.
Common knowledge has it that the magnetic poles have reversed themselves any number
of
times,
and that during the interim between the
establishing of new poles, the earth was blessedly free of any electromagnetic
field whatsoever. I'm surprised that a physicist such as
yourself
has to be informed of such a thing.'' Parsons peered at St. Ives over the top
of his pince-nez,
then
fished up out of his broth a
tendril of vegetable. St. Ives gaped at it. "Kelp," said the
secretary, slathering the dripping weed into his mouth.

 
          
 
St. Ives nodded, a shiver running up along his
spine. The pink chicken breast that lay beneath wilted lettuce on his plate
began, suddenly, to fill him with a curious sort of dread.
His
lunches with Parsons at the Bays water Club invariably went so.
The
secretary was always one up on him, simply because of the food. "So what,
exactly, do you intend?
To hope such an event into
existence?"