Lord Kelvin's Machine - By James P. Blaylock Page 0,50

the town has to offer. That’s the ticket.’ And straightaway I came here, and I’m standing before you now to discover whether she is indeed lodged at this inn.”

That ought to have made it clear to the woman, and apparently it did, for the next thing she said was, “What is the lady’s name?” in a sort of schoolteacher’s voice, a tone that never fails to freeze my blood—doubly so this time because I hadn’t any earthly idea what the woman’s name was.

“She has several,” I said weakly, my brain stuttering. “In the Spanish tradition. She might be registered under Larson, with an o.”

I waited, drumming my fingers on the oak counter as she perused the register. Why had I picked Larson? I can’t tell you. It was the first name that came to mind, like Abner Benbow.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at me.

“Perhaps...” I said, gesturing toward the book. She hesitated, but apparently couldn’t think of any good reason to keep it away from me; there was nothing in what I asked to make her suspicious, and she wouldn’t, I suppose, want to insult the favored cousin several times removed of one of her registered guests. So she pushed her glasses back up her nose, sniffed at me, and turned the book around on the counter.

Fat lot of good it would do me. I didn’t know what the woman’s name was. What sort of charade was I playing? The rubber elephant had been my only clue, and that hadn’t fetched any information out of her. If I brought it back into the conversation now, she’d call the constable and I’d find myself strapped to a bed in Colney Hatch. I was entirely at sea, groping for anything at all to keep me afloat.

I gave the list a perfunctory glance, ready to thank her and leave. One of the names nearly flew out at me: Pule, Leona Pule.

Suddenly I knew the identity of the madman in the coach. I knew who the mother was. I seemed to know a thousand things, and from that knowledge sprang two thousand fresh mysteries. It had been Willis Pule that had stolen my elephant. I should have seen it, but it had been years since he had contrived a wormlike desire for my wife Dorothy, my fiancée then. You wouldn’t call it love; not if you knew him. He went mad when he couldn’t possess her, and very nearly murdered any number of people. He was an apprentice of Dr. Narbondo at the time, but they fell out, and Pule was last seen insane, comatose in the back of Narbondo’s wagon, being driven away toward an uncertain fate.

I noted the room number. They hadn’t left. They might be upstairs at the moment. The nonsense in the coach—his taking the elephant—was that a charade? Was that his way of toying with me? Was it Willis Pule that had shot my beggar man? I thanked the woman at the counter and stepped away up the shadowy stairs, half thinking to discover whether from room 312 a man might have a clear rifle shot down toward the green.

I’ll admit it: right then I was foolishly proud of myself for being “on the case,” and was half wondering about the connection between Pule’s grandfather and the elder Narbondo, which mirrored, if I saw things aright, the relationship between Pule and the doctor. How did Higgins fit, though? Had he discovered references to the lost alchemical papers that had ruined Mrs. Pule’s family? Had he thought to revive Narbondo in order to enlist his aid in finding them? And now they were all skulking about in Sterne Bay, perhaps, carrying out their deadly plans for the machine, waiting for the ransom, thawing Narbondo out slowly at the icehouse.

I felt awfully alone at the moment, and wished heartily that St. Ives and Hasbro weren’t off doing whatever they were doing. The stairs creaked. The evening sunlight filtering through the landing windows was insufficient, and the deepening shadows above me seemed to be a waiting ambush as I stepped cautiously out onto the dim third-floor landing.

An empty hallway stretched away in either direction. Room 312 was either up or down; it didn’t matter to me, for it was clear at once that the landing window would suffice if what you wanted to do was shoot a man. The iron hinges of the double casement were rusted. I got onto my hands and knees and peered at the floor in the