The Curiosity Machine (30 page)

The door slammed shut behind them and Gerald looked up to see Sir Mason Green sitting in a wicker armchair, looking back at him in surprise.

‘You!' Gerald said.

‘You!' Green replied.

Gerald swung around. If Mason Green was inside,
Gerald needed to get out. He made for the door but he was met with the extended point of a samurai sword, just centimetres from his eyes.

‘Please stop,' Ella said, weaving the sword through a tight figure of eight. ‘This thing is extraordinarily sharp.'

Gerald could not take his eyes from the razor tip of the blade. It hovered at his face, as insistent as an annoyed hornet. He did not look around when Ruby demanded of Ella, ‘What are you doing?'

Ella gestured for Gerald to retreat into the room. He stepped backwards and stumbled into the side of a couch. Ella lowered her hands, but kept the sword at Gerald's throat. ‘We'll leave you here for a while,' she said. ‘I believe you already know Sir Mason.'

Gerald tried to keep his breathing under control. ‘It was you two on the glacier in New Zealand, wasn't it?' he said to Ella, his voice quavering. ‘You with your ninja sword and your wrap-around sunglasses.'

Ella ignored him and looked to her sister. ‘Come. We need to report this.'

Gerald's temples pulsed with anger. How could they have got so close to escaping only to be snared like this? He couldn't stop himself. ‘I hope you enjoyed the sausage rolls,' he called to Ella. ‘You must have looked pretty stupid when you returned with a bag of baked goods instead of the plans for the curiosity machine.'

Ella's eyes lowered to meet Gerald's steely gaze. Before he could move she unleashed a kick that drove
the sole of her deck shoe square into his chest. The blow sent Gerald flying backwards over the armrest and onto the couch, punching the air from his lungs. As Ruby and Felicity rushed to Gerald's side, Ella and Irene slipped out the door, locking it behind them. Gerald's eyes swelled as he struggled to draw breath. ‘Maybe teasing her about the sausage rolls wasn't the brightest idea,' Ruby said.

Gerald managed to sit up. Sir Mason Green looked at him from his armchair. The billionaire businessman folded a copy of
The Times
and placed it on a low coffee table. ‘It's terribly dated,' he said, nodding at the newspaper. ‘Though there is an item on the front page about your yacht going missing.'

Green was dressed in safari chic and looked ready for cocktail hour at some upmarket African game lodge. His silver hair, brushed with military precision, served to highlight the intensity of his tan. ‘I suppose you want some sort of explanation,' he said to Gerald. ‘And Miss Valentine, do sit down and stop looking so judgmental.'

Gerald was about to deliver Sir Mason Green some very basic judgments when Ruby settled next to him on the couch. ‘Hear him out,' she said to Gerald. ‘It's not like we have much choice.'

Gerald looked to Ruby, and she gave him an encouraging smile.

‘Go on then, evil mastermind,' Gerald said. ‘Tell us your plan to take over the world.'

Green folded one long, elegant leg over the other and
flicked a piece of lint from his trousers onto the rattan rug at his feet. ‘If only I was in a position to take over anything,' he said. ‘Sadly, Gerald, I am as much prisoner here as you are.'

Felicity turned in disbelief. ‘Just because you're on the run from the police it hardly makes you a prisoner,' she said.

Green smiled. His lips stretched thin across his teeth. ‘Did you not hear the key turn in the lock just then? Those two delightful young ladies are my prison guards. This island is my Elba, my St Helena. I am most certainly an inmate, Miss Upham. I play the role of Napoleon in this sorry tale, and as an Englishman you can imagine how that makes me feel. Until the last few days I was free to walk this island's beaches and swim its waters. But after you escaped from the
Archer
I have been kept under lock and key. It appears word leaked out about our video chat and I'm now considered too much of a risk to be wandering around.'

A dull throb erupted at Gerald's temple. Napoleon? St Helena? What was Mason Green banging on about? ‘If you're not behind all this, then who is?' Gerald asked.

Green steepled his fingers and propped them under his chin. ‘I'm disappointed you have not been able to work that out for yourself, Gerald. Tell me, what have you learned of this mystery? About the Voynich manuscript and its recipes, hidden for centuries behind codes and symbols? About Cornelius Drebbel's perpetual
motion machine, stolen from Rudolph II and hidden in a Scottish castle until Jeremy Davey, the son of a condemned Luddite, managed to liberate it? About supposedly extinct creatures such as the Xerxes Blue butterfly, so rare that any collector would sell his own kidneys to get hold of it? What do all these disparate things have in common?'

Felicity straightened in her seat. ‘It's Rudolph II, isn't it?' she said. ‘The emperor of Bohemia.'

Green raised his right eyebrow. ‘Explain your thinking, Miss Upham.'

‘We know that the manuscript and the perpetual motion machine were part of his cabinet of curiosities,' Felicity said. ‘And Ursus said something about the emperor having a zoo, with rare animals and insects from around the world.'

‘Rare things like the Xerxes Blue butterfly,' Gerald said. ‘And tigers and lions and—'

‘Dodos?' Ruby added. ‘And monster-sized crocodiles?'

Felicity's eyes lit up. ‘Exactly. Just like all of those things.'

Mason Green nodded. ‘Very good. Now, who do you know who's keen on collecting things, particularly in the category of butterflies?'

Gerald's eyes popped wide. ‘Jasper Mantle! From the Billionaire's Club? Is Jasper Mantle behind all of this?'

Green brought his hands together in slow applause.
‘That is precisely what I am saying. Jasper Mantle—modest, mild, somewhat Muppet-like—is our host and our gaoler. He has been pulling the strings on this enterprise since he helped me escape from that Athens prison after our little misadventure in Greece last year.'

Gerald sat in stunned silence. Jasper Mantle, who looked like he wouldn't harm a butterfly, was responsible for this nightmare?

‘You work for Jasper Mantle?' Sam said. ‘That was who you were arguing with on the telephone under the Billionaire's Club in New York. He's your boss?'

Sir Mason shifted a shoulder up an inch. ‘I prefer to think of it as a consultancy arrangement,' he said. ‘I have been helping him with his project—some advice here, a little trip to Scotland there. It seemed the least I could do after he helped me break out of prison and sheltered me here, far from the attention of Inspector Parrott and the Metropolitan Police. I suppose you could say that I have been earning my keep.'

‘But what is Mantle trying to achieve?' Ruby asked. ‘Is he recreating the same collection that Rudolph had four hundred years ago? That's hardly worth kidnapping half the staff of the British Museum and hijacking a super-yacht for.'

‘If it was just a collection of random items, Miss Valentine, I would agree with you,' Green said. ‘But it is what he plans to do with all those items that is driving him.'

Gerald chewed on his bottom lip. ‘The curiosity machine,' he said. ‘All those bits and pieces of the collection form something much bigger.'

‘Again, well done,' Green said. ‘You finding the plans for the curiosity machine in the Billionaire's Club changed everything. It gave Jasper the incentive to complete the collection.'

Gerald took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘So he sent Ursus and his hired guns to steal the plans from me.' He turned to Felicity and Ruby. ‘That's why we were attacked on the glacier,' he said. ‘Ella and Irene must have thought I'd have the plans with me at all times, and they assumed that the backpack Sam had was mine.'

‘Jasper Mantle must have made sure that Ella and Irene were hired as crew on the
Archer
months ago, so they could keep track of you,' Ruby said. ‘He's keen.'

‘Ursus was speaking to one of them the night we were hijacked,' Gerald said. ‘Ella and Irene were the ones who were supposed to keep me close until he arrived.' He turned to Mason Green, who was looking on with bemusement. ‘So Ursus is Jasper Mantle's hired helper—not yours.'

‘I'm afraid I've been without a henchman since you shredded my last one in India,' Green said. He gazed off into the distance. ‘I do miss him.'

‘All this is fascinating, I'm sure,' Ruby said. ‘Why go through all this effort to reassemble a machine for the first time in four hundred years?'

Sir Mason Green stood up and walked across the room to a long window covered with a security grille. ‘I have my suspicions about Jasper's game, and I have laid my bets accordingly. It is quite preposterous and I can't see how it will work, but he has proven himself quite persistent. I'm sure Professor McElderry knows all the details. But I haven't been alone with him to ask him since we were washed down the New York sewers.'

‘I still don't understand why the professor kicked me out of the way in the cellar,' Gerald said. ‘I could have saved him.'

Green clasped his hands behind his back and rose up onto his toes. ‘Knox is a curious one,' he said. ‘He seems to have bought into whatever it is that Jasper is doing.'

‘Maybe you shouldn't have been pumping him full of those potions from the Voynich manuscript,' Felicity said. ‘You are a vile human being.'

Green lowered his heels to the ground but did not turn from the window. ‘Spare me your judgments, Miss Upham,' he said. ‘You are young—your chances at treachery will come soon enough. I seem to recall that is what high school is mostly about.'

Sam put a hand on Felicity's arm. ‘Don't listen to him. We'll get out of here once Jasper Mantle knows we've got the perpetual motion machine.'

The words were out of his mouth before he had a chance to think. Green still had his back to them, but his spine seemed to straighten at the mention of Cornelius
Drebbel's long-lost invention.

‘So you found it?' Green said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Tell me, does it actually still work after all these years?'

Gerald did not know what to do. His backpack sat between his feet—he could almost feel the device pulsing inside. His stomach knotted. They could not lose the advantage of having the machine.

‘Yes, we found it,' Ruby said in a clear and confident voice. She held up a hand to silence Gerald's protests. ‘But we've hidden it. We'll only hand it over once all the people from the
Archer
are delivered safely to the mainland. Felicity's parents, all the museum people—everyone. We all get off this island before anyone even sees it.'

Sir Mason Green continued to stare out the window, seemingly deep in thought. ‘You talk a good game, Miss Valentine, but I'd wager the contents of my frozen bank accounts that it's in that tatty-looking backpack of Gerald's.'

Gerald looked down at the backpack. The time it had spent inside the crocodile had knocked all the shape from it.

‘My offer to you is still open, Gerald,' Green continued. ‘If we work together I can guarantee you a trillion dollars.'

Gerald looked to Ruby. She glared at him. ‘I'm sick of all this talk about money,' she said to him. ‘You can't trust him. It's as simple as that.'

Gerald did not move his eyes from Ruby's face. ‘Can you guarantee everybody's safety and freedom?' he asked Green.

Sir Mason turned from the window. ‘I can certainly guarantee the money. As for the other?' He shrugged. ‘I can only offer to try my best. And I think you know by now that my best is very good.'

Gerald had to make a call. Ella and Irene would return soon enough and they were bound to search his bag. Then Jasper Mantle would have the perpetual motion machine and all their hard-fought advantage would be lost. It was hopeless.

Sir Mason seemed to read Gerald's mind.

‘Let me negotiate for you,' Green continued. ‘Jasper will listen to me. I can secure freedom for you and your parents. I think you'll find I'm your best chance.'

Gerald closed his eyes and sighed. What choice did he have?

‘It's in here,' he said, holding up the pack by its remaining shoulder strap. ‘And it works just fine.'

‘Gerald!' Ruby cried.

Green's face lit up like a jack-o'-lantern. ‘You are a clever lad,' he said.

Chapter 29

Gerald kicked the back of the door for the third time, and swore with gusto. Felicity wrinkled her nose and frowned at him. ‘No one disagrees with you, Gerald,' she said, ‘but you don't have to be quite so explicit about it.'

Gerald landed one last kick then stalked back into the room. ‘We've lost the only bargaining chip we had,' he fumed, this time aiming a foot at an armchair. ‘Green phones Mantle to tell him that he has found the perpetual motion machine, and now he has taken the only thing that we could use to free everybody. We're royally stuffed now.'

Gerald looked up at the sound of a key in the lock. The door opened to reveal two men carrying automatic
weapons. He recognised them as gruff voice and tortoise man from Jeremy Davey's island.

‘Get moving,' gruff voice said, pointing the barrel of his gun towards them. ‘Mr Mantle wants to see you.'

Gerald fell into line for the long march. Eventually, the sound of breaking waves came through the trees and he caught the whiff of a sea breeze on his face, a relief from the claustrophobic cloak of the jungle. Gruff voice turned to an adjoining path and waved them towards a massive hangar. Gerald realised they must be on the other side of the building that housed the curiosity machine. Ruby hesitated at the door. ‘Go on,' gruff voice said. ‘It's unlocked.'

Ruby turned the handle and they were bundled into a cavernous space that seemed somehow larger on the inside than it appeared from the outside. Gerald gazed around in wonder. There was a colossal glass wall about twenty metres in front of them, dividing the room in two. On the other side of the glass the hangar was laid out like a futuristic zoo, with six sectioned-off pens radiating out from the centre. And there was a lot going on.