The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(159)
“Have you brought an assassin with you, Wells?” James exclaimed, scandalized by the bloody spectacle taking place before him.
Wells ignored him. He was too busy following Tom’s movements. Marcus finally responded. Wells saw him retrieve one of his men’s weapons from the floor and aim it at Tom, who, gripping his bloody saber, was that very moment turning towards him. They stood at least four paces apart, and Wells realized with horror that the captain would be unable to cover this distance before the other man fired. And he was not mistaken: Tom barely managed to take a step before receiving the full blast of the heat ray in his chest. The captain’s armor shattered, like a crab shell hit by a hammer, and he was thrown backwards, his helmet flying off as he fell. The force of the shot sent him rolling across the floor until he finally came to a halt, a smoldering crater in his chest, his handsome face lit up by the nearby candelabra. Blood trickled from his mouth, and only the candle flames glinted now in his beautiful green eyes.
Marcus’s roar of triumph broke the silence, forcing Wells to take his eyes off Tom and fix them on him. Marcus surveyed the three corpses strewn around him with amused incredulity. He nodded his head slowly for a few moments, then turned towards the writers huddled together on the far side of the hallway.
“Nice try, Wells,” he said, walking over to them with his springy gait, a ferocious grin on his face. “I have to admit you took me by surprise. But your plan has merely added a few more bodies to the count.” Wells did not reply. He felt suddenly dizzy as he watched Marcus raise his weapon and point it at his chest. He assumed it was the feeling announcing he was about to travel through time. So he would be going to the year 1888 after all. He had done his best to prevent it, but apparently his fate was sealed. There probably did exist a parallel universe where Shackleton had been able to finish off Marcus, and where he would not travel in time and could go on being Bertie, but unfortunately he was not in that universe.
He was in one very similar to that of the future Wells, where he would also travel eight years into the past, but where Captain Shackleton had died, pierced by a heat ray.
Realizing he had failed, Wells could only smile sadly, as Marcus slid his finger towards the trigger. At that very moment, a shot rang out, but a shot fired from an ordinary pistol. Then it was Marcus’s turn to smile sadly at Wells. A moment later, he lowered his weapon and let it drop to the floor, as though he had suddenly decided it was worthless. With the languid voluptuousness of a puppet whose strings have been cut one by one, Marcus slumped to his knees, sat down, and finally toppled over onto the floor, his blood-spattered face still smiling. Behind him, a smoking gun in his hand, Wells saw Inspector Colin Garrett.
“Had the inspector been following him all along?” he wondered, bemused by the young man’s sudden appearance. No, that was impossible, for if Garrett had been spying on him in the original universe, that is to say in the universe where Wells would inevitably travel in time and would write himself a letter, the inspector would have burst in and seized Marcus once Wells had vanished into thin air, and even if Marcus had succeeded in escaping, whether through time or space, Garrett would have discovered everything, whereas Wells knew this was not the case because his future self had read a news item reporting the strange deaths of the authors Bram Stoker and Henry James after a night spent in the haunted house at Berkeley Square. Evidently, if Garrett had seen what happened, that article would not have existed. Accordingly, Inspector Garrett had no business being in that universe any more than in the previous one. The only new card on the table was Shackleton, whom Wells had enlisted in his battle with fate.
Garrett’s presence, therefore, could only have been determined by Shackleton, leading the writer to conclude that he was the person the inspector had followed there.
And, incidentally, he was correct in this assumption, for I, who see everything, can confirm that not two hours before, after a delightful stroll in the company of Miss Nelson, Garrett had bumped into an enormous fellow in Piccadilly. Following the violent collision, the inspector had turned to apologize, but the man was in too much of a hurry even to stop. This strange haste was not the only thing that aroused Garrett’s suspicion; he was also puzzled by the curious solidity of his body, which had left his shoulder smarting painfully. Such had been the force of the blow that Garrett had even thought the fellow must be wearing a suit of armor under his long coat. A minute later, this thought did not seem so foolish. Gazing down at the stranger’s bizarre footwear, he realized with a shudder who it was he had just bumped into.
His jaw dropped, scarcely able to believe it. Trying to keep calm, he began tailing Shackleton cautiously, his trembling hand clasping the pistol in his pocket, unsure of what to do next. He told himself the best thing would be to follow Shackleton for a while, at least until he discovered where he was going in such a hurry.
By turns excited and calm, Garrett followed him down Old Bond Street, holding his breath each time the dead leaves rustled like old parchment under his feet, and then down Bruton Street, until they reached Berkeley Square. Once there, Shackleton had paused in front of what looked like a deserted building and then began scaling its fa?ade until he disappeared through a window on the top floor. The inspector, who had watched his climb from behind a tree, was unsure how to proceed. Should he follow him in? Before he had time to answer his own question, he noticed a carriage pull up in front of the dilapidated building, and, adding to his surprise, out of it stepped the author H. G. Wells, who walked very calmly up to the house and went in through the front door.