her teachers, with the church, with the law, Grace had always played a defiant and potentially dangerous game.
He would follow her, Evangeline had no doubt. The beast of all their myths stood revealed, not as the monster of Sir Owain’s tragic imaginings, but as a nobody with a horrific soul. Behind all the nightmares stood the reality of the cold floor, the pitiless appetite. He would deal with her and then go looking to retrieve the evidence against him.
She dared not stop. If she stopped, he would find her.
She did not even know his name.
FIFTY
When Sebastian could once again breathe unaided, sir Owain propped him with his back against the balustrade and then lowered himself to settle on the floor beside him. Sebastian sat with his head tilted back, looking up. It was a handsome stairway, one of the finest features in the house. It was paneled up to shoulder height, with exposed light stone above. On the stone hung sets of antlers on oak plaques.
As Sir Owain settled, he said, “I’ll tell you a story. This is one you won’t find in the book.”
Sebastian had nothing to offer in reply.
“I swear to you,” Sir Owain went on, “that when I stood up in London before my colleagues to present my observations, I had no idea of the storm I’d be causing in that room, or of the grief that I’d be bringing upon myself. As if I hadn’t grief enough already.
“Picture the scene. The room was crowded. I took the numbers as a sign of interest in what I had to say. But word had already spread, and they were out to deny me a hearing. They had no interest in my proposal that an expanded mind perceives a genuine extended universe. I was a fraud who was trying to sell them monsters, and that was the end of it.”
He looked to Sebastian for a reaction.
“I know what Somerville says about me,” he went on. “He’s of the opinion that my material success made me arrogant in all things. But I swear to you, I have never taken success in business to be the measure of a man’s worth. All the satisfaction that I have ever known lay in having the respect of my peers.
“That’s what I lost, that night. They even booed a slide of the Amazon, as if I’d fabricated
At that point he noticed something, took out a handkerchief, and wiped Sebastian’s chin.
Then he went on, “I rode home in a cab. At the time I had a town house just off Bedford Square. Imagine my feelings. Thanks to that one failed expedition I had lost my wife, my son, my position, and now my reputation. My fortune and my sanity would soon begin to follow.
“As we moved up St. Martins Lane, I grew convinced that my fellow scientists had pursued me on foot and that their cries were rising in the air. They became featherless leather-winged creatures that multiplied above me until they filled the sky. The cabbie heard nothing, and the horses were calm. But I saw the day grow darker and darker, as if in an eclipse.
“When we reached my door I sent the cabbie ahead to ring the bell, and then I ran inside as soon as the door was opened. I closed every shutter and drew every blind, and I forbade the staff to open them. I knew that the creatures were out there, covering my house with their wings. I understood that no one else could see them, but I never doubted their presence. If I listened, I could hear them scratching as they adjusted their grip on the walls. They did exist, I know it, and I know they still do. But
Sebastian turned his head an inch or two, just enough to see Sir Owain. His captor had rested his head back against the balustrade, and his eyes were closed as he continued to speak.
“I know how I sound,” he said. “Like every madman and opium-sniffer who mistakes his delusions for some important truth. But you will see for yourself, Mister Becker. I promise you will see.”
Sir Owain was not a young man. By his own account he had gone without sleep the previous night, spending the long hours watching over Sebastian.
He was fading, for sure, just as Sebastian was regaining the power of movement. Soon would come the opportunity to act.
Stephen Reed returned to the inn, crossing the street from the customs house. He’d heard nothing of Sebastian since the night before, and his attempt to place a call to the house this morning had been met with a dead line. The customs man assured him that this was nothing unusual. The telephone wire to Arnside ran across the entire estate. Sir Owain had paid for the installation himself, but of late had lacked the means to keep the line inspected and maintained.
It was almost twelve. The town’s churches had now emptied, and the inns and hotel bars would soon be filling up. At the gates leading to the Sun Inn’s coaching yard, Stephen Reed saw landlord Bill Turnbull with two shamefaced young boys and a bicycle. One of the boys was wheeling the bicycle, which had a wicker pannier on its handlebars. Both were in their Sunday best, a state that hadn’t lasted the morning. Their neat socks had descended, their halfpenny collars gone awry.
Stephen followed them in. He was thinking that he’d ask Bill Turnbull to arrange transport out to Arnside. Though some kind of pretext would be useful, if his concerns turned out to be misplaced.
Turnbull was telling the boys to sit on the inn’s rear step, to wait there while their parents were sent for. Turnbull was being stern, but Stephen Reed knew an act when he saw one.
He said, “What’s going on?”
“Two young master criminals with a ladies’ bicycle,” Turnbull said. And then he lowered his voice and added, “I’m giving ’em a scare.”
One of the boys piped across the yard, “We found it.”
“Quiet, you.” Turnbull leaned the bicycle against an empty ale cask and looked in the basket for some clue to the owner.
Stephen Reed said, “I need an excuse to go out to Arnside.”
“You don’t need an excuse.”
“All right, then, I need a way to get there.”
“Fancy a bike ride? This one’s going spare.”
Stephen Reed was about to speak, but then he looked again at the bicycle.
“Haven’t I seen it before?” he said.
Turnbull had found a folded note in the pannier along with an old cotton-reel box. After a glance at it he looked up in surprise and held the note out.
“It’s addressed to you,” he said.
Stephen Reed took the note and read it, saw the signature, and went over to the boys.
“Stand up,” he said, “and tell me about this bicycle.”
The boys stood nervously. The ire of Big Bill Turnbull was bad enough. But this cold-eyed, well-dressed stranger was trouble of an unknown magnitude.
One of the boys said, “We thought it was thrown away.”
The other added, “It was buried right down in the hedge, honestly. We was taking it to the meadows to try riding it.”
“How did it get there?”
“Don’t know, sir.”
Stephen Reed pushed it, just to see. “I think you do,” he said.
The second boy admitted, “We thought he was throwing it away.”
“No such luck, my friend,” Stephen Reed said, and he leaned forward to put himself more on their level. “Now,” he said. “Do you want to be two boys who stole a bicycle, or the two young heroes who made sure it got back to Miss Bancroft?”
