The Sea Peoples(68)

“He won’t thank you for that,” Hildred said sharply. “Please say nothing about it.”

“Do you know what it is worth?” said Hawberk.

“No . . . fifty dollars, perhaps?”

“It is valued at five hundred, but the owner of the Prince’s Emblazoned will give two thousand dollars to the person who completes his suit; that reward also belongs to Mr. Wilde.”

“He doesn’t want it! He refuses it!” Hildred answered angrily.

Well, not surprising, if he’s gambling for an empire, Pip thought; her mother had always said you should keep lots of liquid, easily portable assets and a trove stashed here or there, just in case, as she’d put it. Though you’re being very principled with someone else’s money, my bucko.

Hildred’s voice rose a little from that carefully calculated calm: “What do you know about Mr. Wilde? He doesn’t need the money. He is rich—or will be—richer than any living man except myself. What will we care for money then—what will we care, he and I, when—when—”

“When what?” demanded Hawberk, sharp fear in his voice as Hildred’s grew more shrill.

“You will see,” he replied, that flat calm that quivered with unheard tension back again.

Pip rolled her head to the side and peered through the screen of vegetation around the plinth.

Mr. Hawberk did have a rather unexpressive face, but she could catch a glimpse of him blinking rapidly. That was probably his way of running around screaming dangerous lunatic.

“No,” the dangerous lunatic said, apparently able to read the face of his cousin’s prospective father-in-law. “No, I am not mad. Not as the world understands madness.”

Though in his position, I might consider the possibility of a hereditary taint, grab Constance and do a quick bunk for Brazil.

“I am not mentally weak; my mind is as healthy as Mr. Wilde’s.”

Well, the second half of the statement is true, at least.

“I do not care to explain just yet what I have on hand, but it is an investment which will pay more than mere gold, silver and precious stones. It will secure the happiness and prosperity of a continent—yes, a hemisphere!”

“Oh,” said Hawberk.

Meaning, Oh, buggery! Pip thought.

“And eventually,” he continued more quietly, “it will secure the happiness of the whole world.”

And you have the King in Yellow on your side, and it’s his idea of happiness. Does that make you less barking mad, or just a super-powerful madman?

“And incidentally your own happiness and prosperity as well as Mr. Wilde’s?” Hawberk said soothingly.

“Exactly,” Hildred Castaigne said, and smiled or at least showed some teeth.

Hawberk sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment and then said gently:

“Why don’t you give up your books and studies, Mr. Castaigne, and take a tramp among the mountains somewhere or other? You used to be fond of fishing. Take a cast or two at the trout in the Rangelys.”

“I don’t care for fishing anymore,” Castaigne answered, without a shade of annoyance in his voice.

Well, that’s something we have in common, Pip thought.

She’d been shatteringly bored when her father and grandfather tried to interest her in deep-sea sport fishing. Though she did like grilled Marlin steaks with a nice mango-accented salad.

“You used to be fond of everything,” Hawberk continued; “athletics, yachting, shooting, riding—”

“I have never cared to ride since my fall,” he said quietly.

“Ah, yes, your fall,” Hawberk repeated, looking away in an echoing silence.

“But we were speaking of Mr. Wilde,” Hildred said.

“Mr. Wilde,” Hawberk repeated. “Do you know what he did this afternoon? He came downstairs and nailed a sign over the hall door next to mine; it read: Mr. Wilde, Repairer of Reputations. Third Bell.”

“It is his profession,” Hildred said. “For the present.”

“Do you know what a Repairer of Reputations can be?”

“I do,” Hildred replied . . . with a slight hiss to the tone.

“Oh,” Hawberk said again.

Meaning, Oh, buggery!

Louis and Constance came strolling by.

“Do join us!” Constance said. “It is such a lovely day for a walk.”

Hawberk looked at his watch. At the same moment a puff of smoke shot from the casemates of the fort in the river, and the boom of a gun rolled across the water and was re-echoed from the highlands opposite.

Pip jumped slightly; the sound had a thudding force that thumped you in the chest, not like anything she’d ever heard before.

A cannon! she thought. The first one since the Blackout . . . if I were in the real world.

The flag came running down from the flagpole, bugles sounded on the white decks of the warships with sequences that were eerily familiar, and the first light sparkled out from the Jersey shore with the fascinating hard brilliance of electricity.

Pip rose to follow them, murmuring aside to her companions:

“Apparently Hildred—who’s mad as a sackful of cocaine-crazed ferrets, whatever this Dr. Archer who let him out of the booby hatch thinks—sees Louis as standing between him and a throne.”