The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(123)
Emma’s eyes narrowed, her face expressing a quiet intensity, which made the millionaire wish he had mastered the difficult art of painting in order to be able to capture it on canvas. But since his skill with a paintbrush was, to put it politely, practically nonexistent, he could only memorize each detail of her face, carefully storing them away among his other memories.
“My great-grandfather,” the girl pronounced at last.
“Richard Locke . . . the hoaxter?” Murray was surprised.
“Don’t call him that!” Emma protested. “I know he pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes, including mine.” She paused, smiling absentmindedly. “You know, it used to amuse me that he had outwitted everyone. Yes, I was proud to be related to someone who was superior to the stupid, gullible majority. But that’s only one way of seeing it. I see things differently now. Now I believe I could love someone who did what he did . . . simply because all he did was to make the world dream.”
For a few moments, Murray stared at her in silence. And then, very slowly, a smile began to spread over his features. To make the world dream . . . Yes, why not? As the girl had said, everything could be seen in a different light. It was all a question of perception.
“In that case, Emma, I’m going to tell you a story. Something nobody knows. And then you’ll have no choice but to fall in love with me.”
“Really?” said the girl, with a mixture of amusement and surprise.
Murray nodded. “What do you know about Murray’s Time Travel?”
“Well, only what was in the newspapers,” she replied, intrigued. “And that it closed down just when I’d managed to convince my mother to go with me to London and join the third expedition to the year 2000. They said the closure was due to your demise.”
“Well, then, you’re in for a surprise . . . ,” Gilliam began.
? ? ?
FORGIVE ME FOR BREAKING off at such a tantalizing moment, but although the conversation is taking a fascinating turn, I, like you, am very curious to know what is happening at this very moment inside the little room where Wells and Clayton went a few minutes earlier. “I want to show you something I think will interest you greatly,” the inspector had said to Wells. Was this simply an excuse to leave the lovebirds alone? Knowing the inspector’s perceptiveness in such matters, I doubt it. Perhaps it was a subtle way of taking Wells aside without offending the others? More likely.
The room turned out to be smaller than the chamber but bigger than the pantry, and at first sight, Wells was unable to make out whether Clayton used it as an armory, a laboratory, or a simple junk room, for it was filled with an assortment of strange machines, weapons, and objects pertaining to the occult, witchcraft, necromancy, and other dark arts, which the author had always viewed as pure superstition.
Clayton walked over to a glass cabinet standing in a corner of the room, where Wells could make out a neat display of at least a dozen artificial hands. They were made of diverse materials, mostly wood or metal, and while some attempted to reproduce as realistically as possible the inspector’s missing appendage (these were the ones he would no doubt wear when he went to a gala dinner or similar event, where he would need to use cutlery, or hold a cigarette, or, if he was lucky, a woman’s hand), others looked like lethal weapons: one had razor-sharp stiletto-like fingers, one looked like a hand crossed with a pepper-box revolver, and a couple resembled outlandish devices the purpose of which Wells was unable to fathom. Clayton unscrewed his smashed prosthesis and laid it carefully to one side. Then he pored at length over his collection of artificial hands, which, resting on their fingers, gave the impression of hairless tarantulas. He pondered which one best suited the predicament they found themselves in.
While he was deciding, Wells took a desultory stroll around the inspector’s eccentric emporium. Next to a medieval bestiary with fabulous illustrations of griffins, harpies, basilisks, dragons, and other magical creatures, in whose margins Clayton had made several minute annotations, on one of the tables he came across a Ouija board.
“I didn’t know you practiced spiritualism, Inspector,” he remarked, fingering the alphabet fashioned into the exquisite wooden board.
“It shouldn’t come as such a surprise,” Clayton replied without turning round. “Ghosts are a policeman’s best informer: they see everything, and they don’t charge anything, even though they occasionally ask you to carry out some absurd task they never got around to completing when they were alive.”
“I see . . . ,” Wells said cagily, unsure whether or not Clayton was pulling his leg.
Then he examined the half-dozen or so other peculiar artifacts next to the table. His attention was particularly drawn to a strange object that looked like a cross between a gramophone and a typewriter. The anomaly, bristling with rods and levers that stuck out like cactus spines, was endowed with four wheels and crowned by a species of copper-plated cornucopia.
“What is this?”
“Oh, that; it’s a metaphone,” the inspector said, giving it a cursory glance.
Wells waited for an explanation, but since none was forthcoming, he was obliged to ask, “And what the devil is it for?”
“In theory for recording voices and sounds from other dimensions, but in view of its poor results you could say it is completely useless.” Clayton continued examining his collection of fake hands, dithering. “I’m using it to try to find a boy called Owen Spurling, who went missing late last winter in a village in Staffordshire. His mother sent him out to the well to fetch water, and he never came back. When they went looking for him, they were astonished to find that his footsteps came to an abrupt halt in the snow a few yards from the well, as though an eagle or other bird of prey had carried him off. They combed the area but found no trace of him. No one could understand what had happened to him, especially since his mother had been watching him through the window and had only looked away for a few seconds. The boy literally vanished into thin air. The most likely explanation is that he has crossed into another dimension and can’t get back. The metaphone might enable me to hear him and give him instructions, assuming I manage to record anything other than the chirp of Staffordshire birds.”