The Map of the Sky (Trilogía Victoriana #2)(93)
“You damned bitch!” he cried.
“Right,” the girl said, addressing the others. “Next time I’ll aim for the head.”
Fascinated, Murray gazed at the girl, astonished at her pluck. Wells was obliged to tap him on the shoulder to remind him about Clayton. Between the two men, they heaved the inspector into the carriage. Then the millionaire approached the girl and asked her for the gun, with an admiring smile.
“Nice job, Miss Harlow,” he congratulated her. “I hope you can forgive me for putting you in such a perilous situation.”
“You’re very kind, Mr. Murray,” she replied sarcastically as she handed him the pistol. “However, I should point out that you were the one taking the risk by entrusting the weapon to me. I’m sure you believed those ruffians might wrest it from me.”
“Oh, not for a moment.” The millionaire grinned. “Remember, I’ve taken tea with you.”
“Ahem . . .” Wells gave a little cough from inside the carriage. “Forgive me for interrupting, but remember that the Martians are heading this way.”
“Quite so, quite so,” Murray said, helping the girl into the coach. Then he turned to the mob, gave a little bow, and said, “Thank you, gentlemen, you’ve all been most kind. Unfortunately, this carriage is too grand to accommodate your lowly posteriors.”
With these words, Murray climbed in a leisurely manner onto the driver’s seat and, once installed, gave a crack of the whip.
“The insufferable bighead,” Wells muttered.
“I agree. He’s the most conceited man in the world. But thanks to him we recovered the coach,” the girl acknowledged grudgingly.
She was right about that, Wells reflected, as the carriage moved away and through the window he watched the band of aggressors grow smaller in the distance. If Murray had not kept his calm, he himself would almost certainly have taken a beating, and they would be the ones left behind at the station watching those brutes make off with Murray’s coach.
They took the Chertsey road to London almost at a gallop, causing Clayton, whom they had propped up in front of them, to slump sideways on the seat. The violent jolting of the carriage made his arms jump about, and his head flopped from side to side, like a man in the throes of drunkenness. Wells and Emma tried not to look at him, ashamed to witness an intimate moment in the inspector’s life that few would ever see.
As he gazed out of the window, Wells realized night had fallen. A large part of the landscape outside the window was now plunged into darkness. On the horizon he could make out a cherry-red glare and a plume of smoke rising lazily up into the starry sky. From the distant woods of Addlestone came the disturbing boom of cannons, muted and sporadic, which made him think that the army was doing battle with the tripods somewhere.
“Oh my God!” exclaimed Emma.
The girl’s gaze was fixed on something happening outside the window. Alarmed by the look of horror on her face, Wells leaned over her shoulder and peered into the night. At first he saw nothing, only a pine forest immersed in blackness, but then he glimpsed, slipping through the dense shadows, the vision that was terrifying her. A huge bulk was moving swiftly down the slope parallel with the carriage. When he managed to make it out against the darkness, Wells could see that it was a gigantic machine held up by three slender, jointed legs, advancing in great strides like some monstrous insect. Giving off a deafening metallic grinding sound, and swaying ominously, the shiny metal machine moved clumsily yet resolutely through the pine forest, casually crushing the trees underfoot as it went. Wells could see that the uppermost part of the device closely resembled the Martian cylinder he had described, but that the rest of its structure was very different—more like a vast round box covered with a complex mesh of plates, which reminded him of a hermit crab’s shell. He also glimpsed a cluster of jointed tentacles, slender and supple, which moved as though they had a life of their own. Taller than several houses, the moonlight glinting on its metal surface, the thing was marching implacably toward London, opening a pathway through the stand of trees.
The machine suddenly tilted its hood slightly toward the carriage, and Wells had the uneasy feeling that it was watching them. His suspicions were confirmed when a second later the device deviated slightly from its path and began approaching the road. From the sudden jerk of the carriage, Wells deduced that Murray had seen it, too, and was trying to gain some distance by urging the horses on even more forcefully. Wells swallowed hard and, like Emma, gripped the seat to keep himself from being thrown into the air by the coach’s violent shaking. Through the rear window he could see how one of the legs of the tripod emerged from the ditch and planted itself on the road. Then, dragging a clump of splintered pine trees, the other two also appeared. As soon as it was steady on its three legs, the thing set off in pursuit of the carriage. Its huge strides echoed in the night like booming thunderclaps, as the mechanical monster gained on them. His heart beating furiously in his chest, Wells watched as at the top of the machine the strange apparatus that launched the heat ray began its familiar cobralike movement as it took aim.
“That thing’s going to shoot at us,” he shouted, grabbing Emma and forcing her to the floor of the carriage. “Get down!”
There was a loud explosion a few yards to their right. The blast shook the carriage so violently that for a few instants its wheels left the ground, and when it landed again the shock threatened to shatter it to pieces. Surprised to find he was still alive, Wells struggled up as best he could and tried to glance out of the rear window again. Steadying himself against the wild sway of the carriage, he wondered whether Murray was still up on the driver’s seat or had fallen off at some moment during the chase so that they were now speeding on in a driverless carriage. Through the window, Wells saw the small crater the blast had left in the roadside. Behind him, the tripod was still bearing down on them with ominous leaps and bounds, rapidly reducing the twenty yards or so that separated it from the carriage. His heart leapt into his mouth as he saw the tentacle that spat out the ray snaking through the air in preparation for a new strike. It was obvious that sooner or later it would hit them. At that moment, the coach shuddered to a halt, throwing him forward onto the crumpled body of Inspector Clayton. Wells rose and helped the girl up from the floor before returning to his seat. He felt the carriage start moving again. Through the window he could see they were turning. Startled, he poked his head out of the left-hand window and found that Murray had swung round to face the tripod, which continued its ungainly advance toward them.