The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(136)

What could he say to convince the inspector to investigate in a different direction without revealing that Captain Shackleton was not a man from the future, and that the year 2000 was no more than a stage set built of the rubble from demolished buildings? If he failed, Jane would almost certainly die. He stifled a gasp so as not to betray his anguish to the inspector.

Just then, an officer opened the door and asked to see Garrett.

The young inspector made his excuses and stepped out into the corridor, beginning a conversation with his officer that reached Wells as an incomprehensible murmur. The talk lasted a couple of minutes, after which Garrett came back into the office in a visibly bad mood, waving a scrap of paper in his right hand.

“The local police are a lot of bungling fools,” he growled, to the astonishment of Wells, who had not imagined this delicate young lad capable of such an angry outburst. “One of my officers found a message painted on the wall at the scene of the crime which those imbeciles overlooked.” Wells watched him reread the note several times in silence, leaning against the edge of his desk. He shook his head in deep dismay.

“Although, as it turns out, you couldn’t have come at a better time, Mr. Wells,” he said finally, beaming at the author. “This could almost be taken from a novel.” Wells raised his eyebrows and took the scrap of paper Garrett was holding out to him. The following words were scrawled on it: The stranger came in early February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station.

After reading it, Wells looked up at the inspector, who stared back at him.

“Does it ring any bells?” he asked.

“No,” replied Wells, categorically.

Garrett took the note from him and reread it, his head swaying from side to side again, like a pendulum.

“Nor for me,” he confessed. “What is Shackleton trying to say?” After posing the rhetorical question, the inspector appeared to become lost in thought. Wells used the opportunity to rise to his feet.

“Well, Inspector,” he said, “I shan’t trouble you any longer. I’ll leave you to your riddles.” Garrett roused himself and shook Wells by the hand.

“Many thanks, Mr. Wells. I’ll call you if I need you.” Wells nodded and walked out of Garrett’s office, leaving him pondering, precariously balanced on the corner of his desk. He made his way down the corridor, descended the staircase, and walked out of the police station, hailing the first cab he saw, almost without realizing what he was doing, like a sleepwalker or someone under hypnosis, or, why not, like an automaton. During the journey back to Woking, he did not venture to look out the window even once, for fear some stranger strolling along the pavement or a navvy resting by the side of the road would give him a significant look that would fill him with dread. When he arrived home, he noticed his hands were trembling. He hurried straight along the corridor into the kitchen, without even calling out to Jane to tell her he was back. On the table were his typewriter and the manuscript of his latest novel, which he had called The Invisible Man. Pale as a ghost, Wells sat down and glanced at the first page of the manuscript he had finished the day before and which no one but he had ever read. The novel began with the following sentence: The stranger came in early February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station.

There was a real time traveler, and he was trying to communicate with him. This was what Wells thought when he finally emerged from his daze. And with good reason; why else would the traveler have written on the wall the first lines of The Invisible Man, a novel that had not yet been published in his own time, a novel whose existence no one else but he as yet knew about? It was evident that killing a tramp with an unfamiliar weapon had only one purpose: to distinguish that murder from the many others perpetrated each day in the city and to attract the police’s attention, but the fragment of his novel left at the scene of the crime could only be a message for him. And although Wells did not rule out the possibility that the tramp’s strange chest wound had been inflicted by some present-day instrument Garrett and the pathologists had not yet stumbled upon, obviously no one could have known the beginning of his novel, except a man who came from the future. This fact alone dispelled any lingering doubts Wells might have had that he was dealing with a time traveler. He felt a shudder go through his body at the thought, not only because he had suddenly discovered that time travel, which he had always considered mere fantasy, was possible, or rather, would be possible in the future, but because, for some sinister reason he preferred not to think about, this time traveler, whoever he was, was trying to get into contact with him.

He spent all night tossing and turning, unnerved by the unpleasant feeling of knowing he was being watched and wondering whether he ought to tell the inspector everything, or whether that would anger the time traveler. When dawn broke, he had still not come to any decision. Fortunately, there was no need, as almost immediately an official carriage from Scotland Yard pulled up in front of his house. Garrett had sent one of his officers to fetch him: another dead body had turned up.

Without having breakfasted and still wearing his nightshirt under his coat, the dazed Wells agreed to be driven to London.

The coach stopped in Portland Street, where a pale-faced Garrett was waiting for him, alone at the center of an impressive police presence. Wells counted more than half a dozen officers trying desperately to secure the scene of the crime against the crowd of onlookers that had flocked to the area, amongst whom he could make out a couple of journalists.