The Smell of Telescopes (16 page)

But what he actually saw impressed him, as he told me, more than he could have conceived any machine or device capable of impressing him. It is useless to try to convey by words the effect which this apparatus had upon him. However, the main traits of it I can at least indicate. He saw at first only a frock-coat and top-hat; presently it was seen that these covered a body of Victorian severity, almost a disciplinarian, with very bushy side-whiskers standing out like brooms. The hands were of a rugged texture, suited to holding spanners; while the tongue, lubricated with burning spittle, was able to lash pupils and tutors alike. One remark is usually made by those who have seen the original: “Ee oop!” But for Pin, the most astonishing aspect of the encounter was his sudden grasping of the fact that Kingdom Noisette and his work were one and the same thing! He had a great deal of use for this insight.

“My life upon it,” he said; “but the secret of increased efficiency and reduced emissions is here.” Turning to Homunculus, he added: “You be off, and don’t think any more about it. And, by the way, congratulations on winning the poetry chair at the Eisteddfod!”

It was in a somewhat pensive frame of mind that Pin returned to the bar and proposed to Emyr the buying of the generator from the citizens of Lladloh for a reasonable sum. “As it is broken, I am sure you will quote a small price. How much do you ask for it? Will you take two hundred and fifty shillings? This is not confounding.”

“I will not. The contraption is not for sale.”

“My silly barman!” Pin cried again and again, “deal with a gent if you can get on the track of one. Your generator is worth much less than two hundred and fifty shillings, I assure you—much less. Consider its uselessness. What do you want for it?”

“Nothing—nothing in the world. Sir is not welcome to it. We still hope that, one day, it will be mended.”

Even an engineer’s conscience is sometimes stirred, and that of Pin was tenderer than an engineer’s. He confessed that he knew how to fix it and was willing to do so, on the condition that he was allowed to borrow it for a week or two. Emyr could hardly disguise his delight at the news and immediately assented to Pin’s terms. The engineer requested that the generator be hoisted from the cellar—whether by ropes or chains wasn’t an issue—and placed at his disposal. The barman, anxious to learn what had made Pin so confident of success, offered him a cognac on the house, which Pin accepted without loosening his tongue.

While sipping the spirit, the scholar chanced to notice, in a dusky corner of the room, where the walls and furnishings were blackened with soot, a thing that looked like a band of dark shadow sitting at a table. He was reminded of the bobbing shape on the train, the late wayfarer on the road and the vision of twisted blankets glimpsed through the window of his room. Whatever it was, with a sudden smooth motion, it shifted on its chair and began to reach for the pint of beer on the table. It moved awkwardly, in a stooping posture, and all at once the engineer realised, with some horror and some relief, that it must be blind, for it seemed to feel about it with its muffled arms in a groping and random fashion. Turning half away, it became suddenly conscious of its drink and thrust in its hand, as if to gauge the depth of the contents. In a few moments it seemed to know that the glass was empty.

Pin would have liked to have observed this apparition order another pint; but a call of nature required his brief absence. When he returned, and found the shape gone, he was both pleased and disappointed. He asked the barman whether there were any unusual guests staying at the lodgings during the Eisteddfod week; anyone whose extraordinary habits marked him out from the common run of humanity.

“Apart from yourself, none,” opined Emyr. “All present in my tavern are known to me. You are the only stranger.”

Dr Pin finished his cognac, ordered a whisky and soda to dilute it, and made his way to his bed. When he reached his room, the lock of which had been forced, he was alarmed to find his cogs in disarray and all his other possessions thrown about in great profusion, as if an intruder had decided to give vent to his animal spirits. Only the blankets on the bed were undisturbed, and their orderly condition gave the impression that they’d been deliberately avoided. Pin was about to stomp downstairs again, with his boots still on, and complain to Emyr—when he caught a whiff of some feminine scent, a perfume seemingly distilled from a rose garden, and he deduced from this that a frisky maid had been dancing in his room. So he felt at ease once more and went to bed.

The following morning, he arranged the lifting of Kingdom Noisette from the cellar. The burghers of Lladloh rallied round to assist him in relocating the generator to an abandoned railway siding which connected with the town’s main line. Soon Pin was well on his way to implementing Bradley’s suggestion about returning to St James’s on a modern charger. Around the Victorian cadaver, he constructed a high-pressure, 4-cylinder compound 4-6-4 locomotive. He had just the right number of cogs for this purpose; and although wheels were not available, his cake-tins made very adequate substitutes. One of Emyr’s barrels doubled up as a cabin. Only one component was not to be had anywhere in the village, and at first it appeared that the project would be abandoned, so vital was this missing piece. But inspiration came to the engineer; dipping into his pocket, he saved the day, and the people made a hum, and a deal of applause, and Dr Pin felt himself to be of some slight value.

I possess a copy of the timetable for that particular Eisteddfod. A festival held in Lladloh is generally run backwards, and so right at the end of the week, after the climactic events were finished, only a rather thin crowd remained to taste the minor entertainments. As it was nearing the time to pack up, the pegs of the Grand Pavilion were being loosened, with fifty-six tugs of iron pincers, while Pin finally announced that he too was ready to depart from Lladloh. The staff of the tavern, with some guests, who had gathered to wave him off, were joined by the last of the festival mob, and the engineer revealed his secret. First he unbuttoned Noisette’s coat, and then his shirt, to reveal a broad expanse of hairy chest. Stepping forward, he raised a wooden spoon and dealt a tremendous blow on a hidden panel, which sprang open.

“Here is the reason for the fault!” he exclaimed, holding something rather like a grapefruit and inserting it carefully into the cavity thus exposed. “It’s the beating of his hideous heart!”

The object in question, of course, was the small steam-turbine Pin brought with him from St James’s. Once reunited with its host, it had an incredible effect on the broken device. With steadily mounting velocity, Noisette’s top-hat rose and fell; his sideburns worked like crankshafts. The locomotive, which Pin had mysteriously christened Lost Hearts, began to glide down the siding, bearing its scholastic passenger in reasonable comfort. As he gathered speed towards the main line, he was horrified to note a billowing shape leering at him from the ranks of cheering faces. Abruptly, it broke from the mob and headed to intercept him. He quickly accelerated, but it was too late; with surprising agility, the faceless figure leapt up and joined him in the driver’s cabin. As Pin gasped, one corner of its draperies swept across his face.

He was on the point of throwing himself off the train and risking a nasty fall, when the apparition suddenly reached up and pulled off its grotesque covering. Beneath was not a mask. It was a face—not young, not neat, not precise in features. Dr Pin remembers the minute drops of perspiration which started from its forehead; he remembers how the jaw had a plucky cast and the eyes an aptitude for judging distances on the golf-course. He recalls his own astonishment.

“Parkins! What the deuce! This is dreadful!”

But the Chancellor shook his head and launched into an explanation of his presence and strange disguise.

He spoke with great urgency and his elucidations I cannot represent as perfectly as I should like. But the nub of it was his terror when he discovered the theft of his whistle, and his decision to come to Lladloh after Pin. He confessed he was a regular eavesdropper on the engineer’s conversations and had been following his movements rather closely. The figure in the train was none other than himself; as well as the shape in the window and the drinker in the tavern. He burgled Dr Pin’s room in an attempt to locate the whistle, not knowing the engineer kept it on his person. To allay suspicion, he boiled rose-petals in a kettle and then sprinkled the tincture over the carpets.

“I don’t understand it!” Pin cried at last. “Are you mad? You must be, and what a sad thing! Such a good Ontographer too, and so successful in your business. What does it mean?”

“The whole thing is so ghastly and abnormal that I must own it puts me quite off my balance,” avowed Parkins; “but if you bear with me, I’ll tell the rest. It is tied up with the vacation I took to Burnstow years ago. I have much to say about my visit to that dreadful place, and what I found in half-buried ruins by the shore.”

“Excavating, were you?” Pin asked.

“Very little,” was the answer; “I went to improve my golf. But I’d made a sort of promise to Disney, our antiquarian, to look over the site of a preceptory which had once belonged to the Knights Templars. Well, I chanced upon a metal whistle which, when raised to the lips and sounded, invested blankets with a life of their own.”

“Good Heaven! I take it that this was the origin of your abhorrence of sheets? How does the whistle work?”

“I have no idea. It must have something to do with a curse laid on it by the Templars. I believe a clue is afforded by that folk-ditty made popular recently by the invention of the phonograph. I forget who wrote the words: it was either Mrs Ann Radcliffe or Justin Hayward. There is a refrain which mentions knights in white satin!”

Dr Pin was too much of an old woman to have knowledge of phonograph recordings. He deferred to superior wisdom.

“Why did you bring it to St James’s?” he asked.

“Well, I tried to get rid of it first. An acquaintance of mine—my golfing partner—threw it out to sea. But the tide returned it, like an overdue library book, and my hoarding instinct compelled me to add it to the college’s possessions. It remained safely locked in my room until it was snatched by you and brought here.”

“Well, as you have explained the matter, I freely own that I do not like robbing a colleague,” confessed Pin; “I believe what you have said, yet some points need to be cleared up. If you are scared of sheets, why have you taken to wearing one in Lladloh?”

“I had no wish to. I believe I am now acquainted with the extremity of terror and repulsion which a man can endure without losing his mind. After you left St James’s to catch the express, I had less than a minute to secure a disguise and follow you. Although it pained me dreadfully to make use of it, the tablecloth in the refectory was the only thing which suited my build. An unexpected good has come of this—proximity to what I fear most has cured me of my phobia. I’m no longer frightened of linen and much less grumpy as a consequence.”

“That is another point,” put in Pin, sotto voce; “I am still pained by your unreasonable hatred toward me.”

“Just so, Pin, just so. The matter is easily resolved. When I first planned to go to Burnstow, I was full of enthusiasm for the trip. Rather quickly my zeal waned, as it is apt to do with Ontographers. In short, I decided to change my mind. I arranged a feast to inform my colleagues of my altered plans, and was just about to break the news when you piped up with this question: ‘I suppose you will be getting away pretty soon, now Full Term is over, Professor?’ After that, it was impossible not to lose face by backing out. So I went against my will. When the terrible events happened, I held you responsible. You started the adventure, but took no part in it—like a person not in the story!”

“Oh dear, Mr Parkins, what a dreadful thing for me to do. What must you have thought? You must forgive me.”

“Not at all, Dr Pin, I assure you. Coming here has done me a world of good, and I no longer wish to dwell on what might be termed ‘Burnstow Sickness’. It is quite unproductive.”

The reader will not be far wrong if he guesses that Pin accepted this honest statement as an example of good sense. But he will also naturally inquire, as the engineer did, at what inn the Chancellor found lodgings. Parkins was keen to give an answer on the point, and did so with obvious alacrity. When Pin learned it was the nameless tavern where he had spent his own nights—there being only one such establishment in Lladloh—he was confounded. He pointed out that the barman insisted that Pin was the only stranger in the house during the week.

“But I wasn’t a stranger!” Parkins said; “This is my second journey to these parts. When I first came here, thirty years ago, I discovered a civilised society, making use of cheap electricity. For the furtherance of academic learning, I befriended the barman and plied him with drinks until he revealed the secret of the village’s energy supply. Then I went into the cellar, stole Noisette’s heart and took it back to St James’s. This was before you joined the college: when you arrived, it was already part of the Engineering Department! The citizens of Lladloh never knew I was responsible for breaking the generator. Indeed, Emyr kept sending me favourable postcards depicting local sheep.”

It seems curious that, despite his aptitude for cryptic puzzles, Dr Pin hadn’t worked this out for himself.

“This explains the friendly banter of the voices outside my room. I guess Emyr was pleased to see you again. I suppose it also assured you a room at short notice—most ‘belated wanderers’ would be turned away for the duration of the Eisteddfod. But how did you get away with sporting a tablecloth, especially one stained with jam?”

The Chancellor smiled smugly and said: “Really, it was surprisingly easy. I convinced the barman that, as a ‘grapher’, I was ‘Ethno-’ rather than ‘Onto-’, and that I must needs wear a sheet to study Druidic habits more closely. He fell for it: hook, line and sigil. But this is of small urgency. My main concern, and the whole point of my trip, is to stop you blowing my whistle. It is rather dangerous!”