Lord Kelvin's Machine - By James P. Blaylock Page 0,55

time toward the second-floor landing, thinking to charge into the foyer at a run, knocking down anyone between me and the door and maybe shouting something clever at the landlady to regain some lost dignity. I fairly spun around the baluster and onto the bottom flight of stairs, straight into the faces of the two Pules, who puffed along like engines, coming up, she holding the revolver under her shawl and he going along before, both of them with a deadly resolve.

“Here now!” piped the son, clutching my arm in the devil’s own grip.

“Hold him!” she cried. “We’ll make him sing! Up the stairs, Bucko!”

I kicked him on the shin as hard as I could, my momentum lending it some mustard. He howled and slammed backward against the railing, nearly knocking his mother down. He didn’t let go of my arm, though, but pulled me over with him, both of us flailing and rolling and me jerking free and scrabbling back up toward the landing like an anxious crab, expecting to be shot. I was on my feet and jumping up the stairs three at a time toward the third floor, listening to the curses and slaps and yips behind me as Mrs. Pule rallied her son.

There was no shot, despite the way being clear for it and the range close, but I ducked and danced down the third-floor hall anyway, trying to convince myself that she was loath to fire the gun in public and bring about the collapse of her plans. I should have thought of that an hour ago, when she collared me at the window, but I didn’t, and wasn’t convinced of it now.

I blasted past the room again, its door still open and Higgins on his hands and knees on the floor, ruminating. The sight of him brought the Pules up short as they came racing along behind me, and for the moment they let me go in order to attend to him. I headed straight toward a French window, grappled with the latch, pulled it open, and looked out, not onto three stories of empty air, thank heaven, but onto a little dormer balcony. There was a hooting from the open door of the room, and a grunt, and then an outright shriek, as the Pules visited the sins of Jack Owlesby onto the head of poor Higgins.

I closed the window behind me, although I couldn’t latch it. In a moment they’d be through it and upon me. Without a bit of hesitation I hoisted myself over the railing, swinging myself down and in, landing on my feet on an identical balcony below and immediately crumpling up, my ankles ringing with the impact. I was up again, though, climbing across this railing too, and clutching two handfuls of ivy tendrils with the nitwit idea of clambering down through it to safety like an ape in a rain forest. I scrabbled in the vines with my feet as the ivy tore loose in a rush, and I slid along through it shouting, landing in a viney heap in a flower bed.

The window banged open upstairs, and I was on my feet and running, trailing vines, wincing at the pain in my ankles, but damned if I’d let any of it slow me down. I expected a shot, but none came—just a litany of curses cried into the night and then cut off abruptly when a voice from a window in a nearby house shouted, “Wot the hell!” and the strollers down along the street to the pier began to point. Mrs. Pule, blessedly, wasn’t keen on calling attention to herself just then.

I ran straight toward the gap between the two houses that would lead me to the seawall, not slowing down until I was there, clambering over the now-damp stone and jumping to the shingle below, where I found myself slogging through ankle-deep water, the tide having come up to lap against the wall. I nearly slipped on the slick stones, and forced myself to slow down. There was no sound of pursuit, nothing at all, and the wild sense of abandon that had fueled my acrobatic leap from the top balcony drained away, leaving me cold and shaking, my shoes filled with seawater.

I climbed back over the wall and tramped along to the Crown and Apple, up the backstairs to find the door unlocked. I slipped into my room, dead tired and even more deadly thirsty. In fifteen minutes I strolled into the dining