“Are you acquainted with a man named Langdon St. Ives?” he asked abruptly. He half spun around when he said this, as if to take me by surprise.
It worked, too. I sputtered there for a moment, blinking at him. And when I said, “Langdon who?” the attempt was entirely worthless. I was as transparent as window glass.
He acted as if I had admitted everything. “We believe that Mr. St. Ives is also investigating the business of the
“I’m sure I don’t know. Who was it again? Saint what?” It was worthless pretending, and I knew it. I had to dummy up, though. I wasn’t about to answer the man’s questions. St. Ives could do that for himself. On the other hand, I suppose it was pointless to insist that I didn’t know St. Ives. The man was onto my game, what with the false names and the Harrogate business.
“What did you
“
“Something to hide, you think?”
“Bank on it.”
The man nodded, suddenly jolly, grinning at me. “I think you’re right,” he said. “He’s hiding something horrible, is what I think. These are dangerous waters. Very rocky and shallow. He’s a subtle man, Captain Bowker is. My advice is to steer clear of him. Leave him to us. He’ll be in Newgate Prison waiting to swing, if only for this morning’s shooting.”
I must have jerked my eyes open when he said this last, for he grinned at the look on my face and nodded, pursing his lips so that his mouth almost disappeared. “You were a lucky man,” he said. “But you’re safe now. We’re onto him, watching him from every angle. You don’t have to hide in your room like this.
‘‘I wasn’t hiding, actually. I…”
“Of course, you weren’t,” he said, turning toward the door. “Quite a welcome you’ve had. Don’t blame you. Look me up. Binker Street.”
He was out the door then, striding away down the hail. I shut the door and sat on the edge of the bed, studying things out. I understood nothing — less than before. I was vaguely happy, though, that someone was watching the captain. Of course it must have been him who had fired the shot — him and his cowboy upbringing and all. Much more likely than my hansom cab lunatic. I could see that now.
There was another knocking on the door. It’s the agent, I thought, back again. But it wasn’t. It was the landlady with a basket of fruit. What a pleasant surprise, I remember thinking, taking the basket from her. “Grape?” I asked, but she shook her head.
“There’s a note in it,” she said, nodding at the basket.
From Dorothy, I thought, suddenly glad that I’d made the reservation at The Hoisted Pint. Absence was making hearts grow fonder. And quickly, too. I’d only left that morning. There was the corner of an envelope, sticking up through the purple grapes and wedged in between a couple of tired-looking apples. The whole lot of fruit lay atop a bed of coconut fiber in a too-heavy and too-deep basket.
It was the muffled ticking that did the trick, though — the ticking of an infernal machine, hidden in the basket of fruit.
My breath caught, and I nearly dropped the basket and leaped out the door. But I couldn’t do that. It would bring down the hotel, probably with me still in it. I hopped across to the window, looking down on what must have been a half-dozen people, including St. Ives and Hasbro, who were right then heading up the steps. I couldn’t just pitch it out onto everybody’s heads.
So I sprinted for the door, yanking it open and leaping out into the hallway. My heart slammed away, flailing like an engine, and without bothering to knock I threw open the door to the room kitty-corner to my own, and surprised an old man who sat in a chair next to a fortuitously open casement, reading a book.
It was Parsons, not wearing his fishing garb anymore.
Parsons leaped up, wild with surprise to see me rushing at him like that, carrying my basket. “It’s a bomb!” I shouted. “Step aside!” and I helped him do it, too, with my elbow. He sprawled toward the bed, and I swung the basket straight through the open casement and into the bay in a long, low arc. If there had been boats roundabout, I believe I would have let it go anyway. It wasn’t an act of heroics by that time; it was an act of desperation, of getting the ticking basket out of my hand and as far away from me as possible.
It exploded. Wham! Just like that, a foot above the water, which geysered up around the sailing fragments of basket and fruit. Everything rained down, and then there was the splashing back and forth of little colliding waves. Parsons stood behind me, taking in the whole business, half scowling, half surprised. I took a couple of calming breaths, but they did precious little good. My hand — the one that had held the basket — was shaking treacherously, and I sat down hard in Parsons’s chair.
“Sorry,” I said to him. “Didn’t mean to barge in.”
But he waved it away as if he saw the necessity of it. It was obvious that the device had been destined to go out through the window and into the sea. There had been no two ways about it. I could hardly have tucked it under my coat and forgotten about it. He stared for a moment out the window and then said, “Down on holiday,” in a flat voice, repeating what I’d said to him on the pier that morning and demonstrating that, like everyone else, he had seen through me all along. I cleared my throat, thinking in a muddle, and just then, as if to save me, St. Ives and Hasbro rushed in, out of breath because of having sprinted up the stairs when they’d heard the explosion.
The sight of Parsons standing there struck St. Ives dumb, I believe. The professor knew that Parsons was lurking roundabout, because I’d told him, but here, at the Apple? And what had Parsons to do with the explosion, and what had I to do with Parsons?
There was no use this time in Parsons’s simply muttering, “Good day,” and seeing us all out the door. It was time for talking turkey, as Captain Bowker would have put it. Once again, I was the man with the information. I told them straight off about the insurance agent.
“And he knew my name?” said St. Ives, cocking his head.
“That’s right. He seemed to know…” I stopped and glanced at Parsons, who was listening closely.
St. Ives continued for me. “He made sure who you were, and he found out that you had suspicions about what was going on at the icehouse, and then he left. And a moment later the basket arrived.”
I nodded and started to tell the story my way, to put the right edge on it, but St. Ives turned to Parsons and, without giving me half a chance, said, “See here. We’re not playing games anymore. I’m going to tell you, flat out and without my beating about the bush, that we know about Lord Kelvin’s machine being stolen. A baby could piece that business together, what with the debacle down on the Embankment, the flying iron and all. What could that have been but an electromagnet of astonishing strength? There’s no use your being coy about it any longer. I’ve got a sneaking hunch what they’ve done with it, too. Let’s put everything straight. I’ll tell you what I know, and you tell me what you know, and together maybe we’ll see to the bottom of this murky well.”
Parsons held his hands out in a theatrical gesture of helplessness. “I’m down here to catch a fish,” he said. “It’s you who are throwing bombs through the window. You seem to attract those sorts of things — bombs and bullets.”
St. Ives gave Parsons a weary glance. Then he said to me,
“This agent, Jack, what did he look like?”
“Tall and thin, and with a hooknose. He was bald under his hat, and his hair stuck out over his ears like a chimney sweep’s brush.”
Parsons looked as though he’d been electrocuted. He started to say something, hesitated, started up again, and then, pretending that it didn’t much matter to him anyway, said, “Stooped, was he?”
I nodded.
“Tiny mouth, like a bird?”
“That’s right.”
Parsons sagged. It was a gesture of resignation. We waited him out. “That wasn’t any insurance agent.”
The news didn’t surprise anyone. Of course it hadn’t been an insurance agent. St. Ives had seen that at once. The man’s mind is honed like a knife. Insurance agents don’t send bombs around disguised as fruit baskets.