The Map of Time

startled her, but which she had accepted with gentle abandon.

Wells crossed the street without further delay and, after taking a deep breath, as though he were about to plunge into the Thames, he pushed open the door, which yielded with surprising ease. He instantly discovered he was not the first to arrive. Standing in the middle of the hallway, his hands in the pockets of his immaculate suit jacket, admiring the staircase that vanished into the gloom of the upper floor, was a plump, balding man of about fifty.

Hearing him come in, the stranger turned to Wells and held out his hand, introducing himself as Henry James. So, this elegant fellow was James. Wells did not know him personally, for he was not in the habit of frequenting the sort of club or literary salon which were James’s preserve and where, according to what Wells had heard, this prudish man of private means sniffed out the secret passions of his fellow members, then committed them to paper in a prose as refined as his manners. The difficulty in meeting him had not caused Wells to lose any sleep. Besides, having ploughed through The Aspern Papers and The Bostonians, he felt almost comforted to know that James lived in a world far from his own. He had concluded that the only thing he and James had in common was that they both spent their lives tapping away on typewriters. If Wells recognised any merit in James it was his undeniable talent for using very long sentences in order to say nothing at all.

Perhaps James felt similar disdain for Wells’s work because he could not help pulling a face when Wells introduced himself. A number of seconds passed, during which the two men confined themselves to looking suspiciously at one another, until James obviously decided they were about to infringe some obscure law of etiquette, and hastened to break the awkward silence.

‘Apparently we have arrived at the correct time. Our host was clearly expecting us this evening,’ he said, gesturing towards the various candelabra distributed around the space, which, although they did not completely disperse the shadows, cast a circle of light in the centre of the hall, where the meeting was apparently to take place.

‘It would seem so,’ Wells acknowledged.

Both men gazed up at the coffered ceiling, the only thing to admire in the empty hallway. Luckily this tense silence did not last long, because almost at once a creaking door announced the arrival of the third author.

The man opening it with the timid caution of someone entering a crypt was also in his fifties. He had a shock of flaming red hair and a neatly clipped beard that accentuated his jaw. Wells recognised him at once. It was Bram Stoker, the Irishman who ran the Lyceum Theatre, although he was better known in the London clubs as the agent and lapdog of the famous actor Henry Irving. Seeing him creep in, Wells could not help recalling the rumours that Stoker belonged to the Golden Dawn, an occult society of which other fellow writers, such as the author Arthur Machen or the poet W B. Yeats, were members.

The three men shook hands in the circle of light, before lapsing into a deep, uneasy silence. James had retreated into his precious haughtiness, while beside him Stoker was fidgeting nervously. Wells was enjoying this awkward meeting of three individuals who apparently had little or nothing to say to one another, even though all three, in their own separate ways, devoted their time to the same activity: dredging up their lives on paper.

‘I’m so glad to see you’re all here, gentlemen.’

The voice came from above. As one, the three writers glanced towards the staircase, down which the supposed time traveller was slowly descending, as though relishing the suppleness of his movements.

Wells studied him with interest. He was about forty years old, of medium height and athletic build. He had high cheekbones, a square chin, and wore a short, clipped beard, whose purpose seemed to be to soften his angular features. He was escorted by two slightly younger men, each with a peculiar-looking rifle slung over his shoulder. At least, that was what the writers assumed they were, more from the way the men were carrying them than from their appearance: they resembled two crooked sticks made of a strange silvery material. It did not take much intelligence to realise these were the weapons that emitted the heat ray that had killed the three victims.

The time traveller’s ordinary appearance disappointed Wells, as though because he came from the future he ought to have looked hideous, or at the very least disturbing. Had the men of the future not evolved physically, as Darwin had predicted? A few years before, Wells had published an article in the Pall Mall Budget in which he envisaged the evolution of man’s appearance over the centuries: mechanical devices would finally eliminate the need for limbs; advances in chemistry would render the digestive apparatus obsolete; ears, hair, teeth and other superfluous adornments would suffer the same fate. Only the two truly indispensable organs man possessed would survive this slow pruning process: the brain and the hands, which, of course, would increase in size considerably. The product of such speculation would necessarily be terrifying to behold, which was why Wells felt cheated by the mundane appearance of this man from the future standing in front of him.

The traveller – who, to add to his frustration, was dressed like his henchmen in an elegant brown suit – came to a halt and gazed at them in satisfied silence, a mischievous smile playing about his lips. Perhaps the faintly animal look in his intense black eyes and the grace of his gestures were the only qualities that delivered him from ordinariness. But such traits were not exclusive to the future either, for they could be found in some men in the present, which, thankfully, was inhabited by more athletic, charismatic specimens than most of those exemplified in the current gathering.

‘I imagine this place could not be more to your liking, Mr James,’ the traveller remarked, smiling sardonically at the American.

James, a past master at the art of innuendo, smiled back at him coldly but politely. ‘I shall not deny you are correct, although if you will allow me, I shall defer my admission, for I shall only be able to give it truthfully if, by the end of this meeting, I consider the outcome a worthy enough recompense for the dreadful toll the journey from Rye has taken on my back,’ he replied.

The traveller pursed his lips, as though uncertain if he had entirely understood James’s convoluted response.

Wells shook his head.

‘Who are you and what do you want from us?’ Stoker asked, in a quailing voice, his eyes fixed on the two henchmen, who were looming like a pair of inscrutable shadows at the edge of the lighted area.

The traveller fixed his gaze on the Irishman, and studied him with affectionate amusement. ‘You needn’t address me in that timorous voice, Mr Stoker. I assure you, I only brought you here with the intention of saving your lives.’

‘In that case forgive our reticence, but you will understand that murdering three innocent people in cold blood, with the sole aim of drawing our attention, leads us to doubt your philanthropic intentions,’ retorted Wells, who was just as capable, when he wanted, of stringing together sentences as tortuous as those of James.