The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(56)

A series of sharp jolts interrupted his reflections. Murray glowered at the acrobats, who were currently dangling from the sides of the hot-air balloon, until he realized that could only mean one thing: they were arriving at their destination. His heart began racing. He looked uneasily at the ground, and his suspicions were confirmed. Beyond the soft treetops over which they were now floating, he could see the green pastures of Horsell Common, where, under cover of darkness, his assistants had positioned the Martian cylinder. A noisy crowd had gathered around the object, and as the balloon began to its descent, Murray could smell the air thick with gunpowder from the fireworks display. (He himself had arranged for the first ones to be let off from inside the cylinder to inaugurate the spectacle.) He could hear the band playing below, and gradually he was able to make out the colorful procession of horses, elephants, dancers, conjurors, sword swallowers, clowns, and jugglers he had hired, which, as far as he could tell from above, were delighting the crowd. And, squinting, he could just make out the shape of the would-be Martian, a puppet poking out of a trapdoor in the cylinder and moving to the rhythm of the festive music even as it waved a banner, whose slogan Murray had no need to read from there because he had written it himself: “Emma, will you marry me?”

Just then, a crescendo of rolling drums made everyone turn around, eager to see what fresh marvels they heralded. The hot-air balloon descended another yard or so, though no one seemed to have noticed it yet. However, Murray was close enough now to the crowd to be able to see some of the faces turning this way and that. His heart skipped a beat when, peeping out from beneath a parasol that was continuously twirling, he made out Emma’s face, expressing a look of charming astonishment. There she was, fearless as an Amazon, delicate as a blossom, honoring the appointment she herself had agreed to as the deadline for her challenge. On August first, Martians will land on Horsell Common, he had promised her. You have my word, Emma. They will come all the way from Mars just so that you marry me. She had kept the appointment, ready to see him fail in his attempt to achieve the impossible. And there she had found a cylinder, like a cornucopia from which had spilled an entire circus . . . Murray swallowed, unable to contain his excitement. What would the girl’s reaction be when he climbed out of the hot-air balloon, revealing himself to be the person responsible for all that jubilation? However, before he had time to answer his own question, he spotted Wells standing a few feet beyond the girl. He had on a garish checked three-piece suit, which only he could wear with such naturalness, and next to him, looking for all the world as if Wells had used up all the colors, was a lanky fellow dressed in a plain dark suit. Despite his agitation, Murray couldn’t help grinning when he saw him. Not only had Wells deigned to give him advice, he had come there to support him in person. Did his future happiness matter so much to Wells? The thought moved him more than if he had heard a whale sing, and he felt a sudden wave of affection for the author and, by extension, for the rest of the human race, excepting the unflappable hot-air balloon pilot. Overcome with emotion, he swore to himself that if he succeeded in marrying Emma, Wells would be his best man, and he would never again hate anyone as he had hated him, nor would he ever exchange blows with anyone again, or make another enemy so long as he lived. He would be the most generous man on the planet, someone whose happiness made it impossible for him to desire the unhappiness of others. A man cleansed by love, a pure altruist, a pure philanthropist.

It was then that the balloon’s enormous shadow slid across the crowd, and a hundred faces turned and looked upward. Murray hurriedly recoiled from the edge. He didn’t want anyone to see him until the basket had touched the ground and he stepped out with the grandiose flourishes he had spent the past few days rehearsing in front of a mirror. His arrival must be triumphant, he reminded himself, as the acrobats began to perform pirouettes, descending the multicolored ropes and dangling gracefully from the ends. When the balloon had reached the place where it was supposed to land, next to the cylinder, the acrobats leapt to the ground and, like the most outlandish collection of footmen imaginable, spread out across the grass, genuflecting gracefully as they prepared to welcome their master. Then Murray took a deep breath, activated the vapor machine inside his hat, as well as the device operating his rotating bow tie, and mustered his most dazzling smile: the moment had arrived for him to make his appearance in the spectacle he had orchestrated to make the woman he loved laugh.

However, if that was Murray’s interpretation of the scene, Wells observed it through very different eyes. When the enormous shadow passed over their heads like the darkness of an eclipse, Wells and Clayton looked up and contemplated in silent awe the huge hot-air balloon descend toward the cylinder as it prepared to land. Wells, his mouth set in a pale line, watched the gigantic, brightly colored globe with its pompous, glittering “G.” Suspended from it was a small basket, rocking from side to side, and although for the moment only the underneath was visible, Wells knew perfectly well who was inside it. He gave a sigh as he saw the troupe of acrobats dressed as footmen dangling from the basket. There was only one man who could have planned such a vulgar, ostentatious entrance. What Wells remained unsure of was whether he would have the stomach to contemplate Murray’s contemptible face again after two blissful years of believing he was rid of him for good.

He was of half a mind to turn on his heel and leave, but finally he stayed where he was, because he wasn’t completely sure in what capacity he had requested that Clayton accompany him. That skinny detective with the fake hand, who registered his astonishment at the spectacle by raising his right eyebrow, had arrived at Wells’s house to tell him that a Martian cylinder had landed on Horsell Common exactly as he described in his novel. And had Wells not received a letter a month before announcing that madness, he would have taken him for a lunatic or a prankster.