and made his way slowly towards the building, savouring the aromas floating in the afternoon air, still with the manuscript of
On entering, he discovered Stoker and James already there, engaged in a lively conversation with the man who was about to kill them in the halo of light cast by the candelabra dotted about the hallway. From then on, every time he heard some columnist praising the American’s uncanny powers of observation, he would be unable to stop himself guffawing.
‘Ah, Mr Wells,’ cried Rhys, on seeing him. ‘I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.’
‘Forgive the delay, gentlemen,’ Wells apologised, glancing despondently at Rhys’s two henchmen, who were firmly planted at the edge of the rectangle of light on the floor, waiting for Rhys to give them the order to finish off the foolish trio.
‘Oh, that doesn’t matter,’ said his host. ‘The important thing is you’ve brought your novel.’
‘Yes,’ said Wells, waving the manuscript idiotically.
Rhys nodded, pleased, and pointed at the table beside him, signalling to him to leave it on top of the two already there. Rather unceremoniously, Wells added his own to the pile, then stepped back a few paces. He realised this placed him directly in front of Rhys and his henchmen, and to the right of James and Stoker, an ideal position if he wanted to be shot first.
‘Thank you, Mr Wells,’ said Rhys, casting a satisfied eye over the spoils on the table.
He will smile now, thought Wells. And Rhys smiled. He will stop smiling now and look at us, suddenly serious. And he will raise his right hand now.
But it was Wells who raised his. Rhys looked at him with amused curiosity. ‘Is something wrong, Mr Wells?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I hope nothing is
With these words, he let his hand fall in a sweeping motion – as he had little experience at making gestures of this kind, it lacked authority looking more like the action of someone swinging a censer.
Even so, the person who was supposed to receive the message understood. There was a sudden noise on the upper floor, and they raised their heads as one towards the stairwell, where something, which for the moment they could only describe as vaguely human, came hurtling towards them. Only when the brave Captain Shackleton landed on the floor in the middle of the circle of light did they realise it was a person.
Wells could not help smiling at the position Tom had taken up, knees bent, muscles tensed, like a wild cat ready to pounce on its prey. The light from the candelabra glinted on his armour, the metal shell covering him from head to toe, except for his strong, handsome chin. He struck a truly heroic figure, and Wells understood now why he had asked his former companions to get him the armour, which they had stolen from Gilliam Murray’s dressing room that very morning.
While the others were still trying to understand what was going on, Shackleton unsheathed his sabre, performed a perfect flourish in the air and, following the movement through, plunged the blade into one of the two henchmen’s stomachs. His companion tried to take aim, but the distance between them was too short for him to manoeuvre, which gave the captain ample time to draw the sword from his victim’s stomach and swing round gracefully.
The henchman watched with horrified fascination as Shackleton raised his sword, slicing the man’s head off with a swift two-handed blow. Still gaping in terror, the head rolled across the floor, disappearing discreetly into the gloomy edge of the circle of light.
‘Have you brought an assassin with you, Wells?’ James exclaimed, scandalised by the bloody spectacle taking place before him.
Wells ignored him. He was too busy following Tom’s movements. Rhys finally responded. Wells saw him retrieve one of his men’s weapons from the floor and aim it at Tom who, gripping his bloody sabre, was that very moment turning towards him. They stood at least four paces apart, and Wells realised with horror that the captain would be unable to cover this distance before the other man fired. And he was not mistaken: Tom barely managed to take a step before he received the full blast of the heat ray in his chest. His armour shattered, like a crab shell hit by a hammer, and he was thrown backwards, his helmet flying off as he fell. The force of the shot sent him rolling across the floor until he finally came to a halt, a smouldering crater in his chest, his handsome face lit by the nearby candelabra. Blood trickled from his mouth, and only the candle flames glinted now in his beautiful green eyes.
Rhys’s roar of triumph broke the silence, forcing Wells to take his eyes off Tom and fix them on him. Rhys surveyed the three corpses strewn around him with amused incredulity. He nodded slowly, then turned towards the writers, huddled together on the far side of the hallway.
‘Nice try, Wells,’ he said, walking over to them with his springy gait, a ferocious grin on his face. ‘I have to admit you took me by surprise. But your plan has merely added a few more bodies to the count’
Wells did not reply. He felt suddenly dizzy as he watched Rhys raise his weapon and point it at his chest. He assumed the sensation announced that he was about to travel through time. So he would be going to the year 1888 after all. He had done his best to prevent it, but apparently his fate was sealed. There probably did exist a parallel universe where Shackleton had been able to finish off Rhys, and where he would not travel in time and could go on being Bertie, but unfortunately he was not in that universe. He was in one very similar to that of the future Wells, where he would also travel eight years into the past, but where Captain Shackleton had died, pierced by a heat ray.
Realising he had failed, Wells could only smile sadly, as Rhys slid his finger towards the trigger. At that very moment, a shot rang out, but a shot fired from an ordinary pistol. Then it was Rhys’s turn to smile sadly at Wells. A moment later, he lowered his weapon and let it drop to the floor, as though he had suddenly decided it was worthless. With the languid voluptuousness of a puppet whose strings have been cut one by one, Rhys slumped to his knees, sat down, and finally toppled over on to the floor, his blood-spattered face still smiling. Behind him, a smoking gun in his hand, Wells saw Inspector Colin Garrett.
Had the inspector been following him all along? he wondered, bemused by the young man’s sudden appearance. No, that was impossible: if Garrett had been spying on him in the original universe – that is to say, in the universe where Wells would inevitably travel in time and would write himself a letter, the inspector would have burst in and seized Rhys once Wells had vanished into thin air, and even if Rhys had succeeded in escaping, whether through time or space, Garrett would have discovered everything. Wells knew this was not the case because his future self had read a news item reporting the strange deaths of the authors Bram Stoker and Henry James after a night spent at the haunted house in Berkeley Square. Evidently, if Garrett had seen what had happened, that article would not have existed. Accordingly, Inspector Garrett had no business being in that universe
