Time Travel Omnibus, page 142
He was suddenly and uncomfortably aware of his beating heart, but gripped himself and walked on until he came to a lighted shop front where he glanced at the paper.
“Thursday, July 29, 1926 . . .” he read.
He thought a moment.
It was Wednesday . . . he was positive it was Wednesday. He took out his diary. It was Wednesday, the twenty-eighth day of July—the last day of the Kempton Park meeting. He had no doubt on the point, none whatever.
With a strange feeling he glanced at the paper again. July 29, 1926. He turned to the back page almost instinctively—the page with the racing results.
Gatwick . . .
That day’s meeting was at Kempton Park. To-morrow was the first day of the Gatwick meeting, and there, staring at him, were the five winners. He passed his hand across his forehead; it was damp with cold perspiration.
“There’s a trick somewhere,” he muttered to himself, and carefully re-examined the date of the paper. It was printed on each page . . . clear and unaltered. He scrutinized the unit figure of the year, but the “six” had not been tampered with.
He glanced hurriedly at the front page. There was a flaring headline about the Coal Strike . . . that wasn’t twenty-five. With professional care he examined the racing results. Inkerman had won the first race . . . Inkerman—and Knocker had made up his mind to back Paper Clip with more money than he could afford to lose. Paper Clip was merely an also-ran. He noticed that people who passed were glancing at him curiously. Hurriedly he pushed the paper into an inner pocket and walked on.
Never had Knocker so needed a drink. He entered a snug little “pub” near Charing Cross and was thankful to find the saloon bar nearly deserted. Fortified with his drink he turned again to the paper. Inkerman had come home at 6 to 1. He made certain hurried but satisfactory calculations. Salmon House had won the second; he had expected that, but not at such a price . . . 7 to 4 on. Shallot—Shallot of all horses!—had romped away with the third, the big race. Seven lengths . . . at 100 to 8! Knocker licked his dry lips. There was no fake about the paper in his hand. He knew the horses that were running at Gatwick the following day and the results were there before him. The fourth and fifth winners were at short prices; but Inkerman and Shallot were enough . . .
It was too late to get into touch with any of the bookmakers that evening, and in any case it would not be advisable to put money on before the day of the race. The better way would be to go to Gatwick in the morning and wire the bets from the course.
He had another drink . . . and another.
Gradually, in the genial atmosphere of the saloon bar, his uneasiness left him. The affair ceased to appear uncanny and grotesque, and became a part of the casual happenings of the day. Into Knocker’s slightly fuddled brain came the memory of a film he had once seen which had made a big impression on him at the time. There was an Eastern magician in the film, with a white beard, a long, white beard just like the one belonging to the old man. The magician had done the most extraordinary things . . . on the screen.
But whatever the explanation, Knocker was satisfied it was not a fake. The old chap had not asked for any money; indeed, he had not even taken the half-crown that Knocker had offered him. And as Knocker knew, you always collected the dibs—or attempted to—if you were running a fake.
He thought pleasantly of what he would do in the ring at Gatwick the following day. He was in rather low water, but he could put his hands on just about enough to make the bookies sit up. And with a second winner at a 100 to 8!
He had still another drink and stood the barman one too.
“D’you know anything for to-morrow?” The man behind the bar knew Thompson quite well by sight and reputation.
Knocker hesitated.
“Yes,” he said. “Sure thing. Salmon House in the second race. Price’ll be a bit short, but it’s a snip.”
“Thanks very much; I’ll have a bit on meself.”
Ultimately he left the saloon bar. He was a little shaky; his doctor had warned him not to drink, but surely on such a night . . .
The following morning he went to Gatwick. It was a meeting he liked, and usually he was very lucky there. But that day it was not merely a question of luck. There was a streak of caution in his bets on the first race, but he flung caution to the wind after Inkerman had come in a comfortable winner—and at 6 to 1. The horse and the price! He had no doubts left. Salmon House won the second, a hot favourite at 7 to 4 on.
In the big race most of the punters left Shallot alone. The horse had little form, and there was no racing reason why anyone should back him. He was among what the bookies call “the Rags.” But Knocker cared nothing for “form” that day. He spread his money judiciously. Twenty here, twenty there. Not until ten minutes before the race did he wire any money to the West End offices, but some of the biggest men in the game opened their eyes when his wires came through. He was out to win a fortune. And he won.
As the horses entered the straight one of them was lengths ahead of the field. It carried the flashing yellow and blue of Shallot’s owner. The groan that went up from the punters around him was satisfactory, but there was no thrill in the race for him; he had been certain that Shallot would win. There was no objection . . . and he proceeded to collect.
His pockets were bulging with notes, but his winnings were as nothing compared with the harvest he would reap from the big men in the West End. He ordered a bottle of champagne, and with a silent grin drank the health of the old man with the beard before he sent for the taxi that would take him back to the station. There was no train for half-an-hour, and, when at last it started, his carriage had filled with racing men, among whom were several he knew. The wiser race-goers rarely wait until the end of a meeting.
Knocker was usually very expansive after a good day, but that afternoon he took no part in the conversation, with the exception of an occasional grunt when a remark was made to him. Try as he would he could not keep his thoughts away from the old man. It was the memory of the laugh that remained with him most vividly. He could still feel that queer sensation down his spine . . .
On a sudden impulse he took out the paper, which was still in his pocket. He had no real interest in news, as such, for racing absorbed the whole of his very limited imagination. As far as he could tell from a casual inspection it was a very ordinary sort of paper. He made up his mind to get another in town and compare the two in order to see if the old man had spoken the truth. Not that it mattered very much, he assured himself.
Suddenly his incurious glance was held. A paragraph in the stop-press column had caught his eye. An exclamation burst from him.
“Death in race-train,” the paragraph was headed. Knocker’s heart was pumping, but he read on mechanically: “Mr. Martin Thompson, a well-known racing man, died this afternoon as he was returning from Gatwick.”
He got no further; the paper fell from his limp fingers on to the floor of the carriage.
“Look at Knocker,” someone said. “He’s ill . . .”
He was breathing heavily and with difficulty.
“Stop . . . stop the train,” he gasped, and strove to rise and lurch towards the communications cord.
“Steady on, Knocker,” one of them said, and grasped his arm. “You sit down, old chap . . . mustn’t pull that darned thing . . .”
He sat down . . . or rather collapsed into his seat. His head fell forward.
They forced whisky between his lips, but it was of no avail.
“He’s dead,” came the awestruck voice of the man who held him.
No one noticed the paper on the floor. In the general upset it had been kicked under the seat, and it is not possible to say what became of it. Perhaps it was swept up by the cleaners at Waterloo. Perhaps . . . No one knows.
NO SHIPS PASS
Lady Eleanor Smith
“I am glad,” thought Patterson, “That I’ve always been a damned good swimmer . . .” and he continued to plow his way grimly through the churning, tumbled argent of the breakers. It seemed hours, although it was actually moments, since the yacht had disappeared in one brief flash of huge and bluish flame; now the seas tossed, untroubled, as though the yacht had never been; and the boat containing his comrades had vanished, too, he noticed, glancing over his shoulder—had vanished with such swiftness as to make him think that it must have been smudged by some gigantic sponge from the flat, greenish expanse of the ocean. The strange part was that he was able, as he swam, to think with a complete, detached coherence; he was conscious of no panic; on the contrary, as he strove with all his might to gain the strip of land dancing before his eyes, his mind worked with a calm and resolute competence.
“I always thought we’d have a fire with all that petrol about . . . Curse all motor-yachts . . . I wonder if the others have been drowned? . . . Good job I gave the boat a miss . . .”
He was not even conscious of much regret as he thought of the probable fate of his comrades—his employer, his employer’s son, the members of the crew. Already, as he swam on and on through gently lapping waves, the yacht and those who belonged to it had become part of the past, remote and half-forgotten. The present and the future lay ahead, where a long line of sand shimmered like silver before his eyes. Yet it was funny, he mused; there had been no sign of land seen from aboard the yacht, and it was not until the actual panic of the fire that he had noticed the dim shape of this island, “near enough to swim to,” as he had cried to the others, but they swarmed into the boat, taking no notice of his cries. And so he had embarked alone upon this perilous adventure.
He was a strong swimmer, but he was growing tired. Were his limbs suddenly heavier, or had the sea become less buoyant? He clenched his teeth, striking out desperately, then floated for a while, lying on his back, the huge arch of the sky towering a million miles above him like some gigantic bowl, all fierce hydrangea-blue. When he turned to swim again, he was refreshed, but more sensible of the terrors of his situation. And yet, was it his fancy, or had the shores of the island loomed nearer during the moments of this brief rest? At first he believed himself to be suffering from hallucination, then, as he looked again, he realized that he was making remarkable progress . . . He was now so near that the beach glittered like snow in the tropical sunshine before his eyes, and the sands dazzled him, yet he could perceive, lapping against them, a line of softly creaming surf, and above the sands there blazed the vivid jewel-green of dense foliage. The gulls wheeled bright-winged against the brighter silver of sea and sand. Then he was prepared to swear that his ears distinguished, sounding from the shore, a harsh and murmurous cry that might have been—for he was very weary—something in the nature of a welcome for the creature trying so desperately to gain this sparkling and gaudy sanctuary.
And then exhaustion descended upon him like a numbing cloak, and his ears sang and his brain whirled. His limbs seemed weighted, and his heart pumped violently and he thought he must drown, and groaned, for at that moment life seemed sweet and vivid, since life was represented by the island, and the seas were death.
“Well, now for death,” he thought, and as he sank, his foot touched bottom.
He realized afterwards that he must have sobbed aloud as he staggered ashore. For a moment, as he stood ankle-deep in warm, powdery sand, with the sun pouring fiercely upon his drenched body, the surf curdling at his feet and the cool greenness of a thickly matted forest cresting the slope above his head, he still thought that he must be drowning, and that this land was mirage. Then the silence was shattered by a shrill scream; and a glowing parrot, rainbow-bright, flew suddenly from amidst the blood-red shower of a tall hibiscus-bush, to wheel, gorgeous and discordant, above his head. Beating wings of ruby and emerald and sapphire. Dripping fire-colored blossom. Loud, jangling, piercing cries. The island was real.
Patterson fainted, flopping like a heap of old clothes upon the smooth, hard silver of the sand . . .
When he came to himself, the sun was lower and the air fragrant with a scented coolness that seemed the very perfume of dusk itself. For a moment he lay motionless, his mind blank, then, as complete consciousness returned to him and he rolled over on his face, he became aware of a black, human shadow splashed across the sands within a few inches of where he lay. The island, then, must obviously be inhabited. He raised his eyes defiantly.
He could not have explained what he had expected to see—some grinning, paint-raddled savage, perhaps, or else the prim, concerned face of a missionary in white ducks, or, perhaps, a dark-skinned native girl in a wreath of flowers. He saw actually none of these, his gaze encountering a shorter, stranger form—that of an elderly, dwarfish man in what he at first supposed to be some sort of fancy dress. Comical clothes! He gaped at the short, jaunty jacket, the nankeen trousers, the hard, round hat, and, most singular of all, a thin and ratty pigtail protruding from beneath the brim of this same hat. The little man returned his scrutiny calmly, with an air of complete nonchalance; he revealed a turnip face blotched thick with freckles, a loose mouth that twitched mechanically from time to time, and little piggish, filmy blue eyes.
“Good God,” said Patterson at length, “who are you, and where did you appear from?”
The little man asked, in a rusty voice proceeding from deep in his throat:
“Have you tobacco?”
“If I had it’d be no use to you. Do you realize I swam here?”
“You swam? From where?”
There was silence for a moment, a silence broken only by the breaking of the surf and by the harsh cry of birds, as Patterson, more exhausted than he had first supposed, tried idiotically to remember to what strange port the yacht, Seagull, had been bound.
He said at length:
“I—we were on our way to Madeira. The Southern Atlantic. The yacht—a petrol-boat—caught fire. And so I swam ashore.”
“Petrol?” the man replied, puzzled. “I know nothing of that. As for the Southern Atlantic, I myself was marooned on these shores deliberate, many and many a year ago, when bound for Kingston, Jamaica.”
“Rather out of your course, weren’t you?”
The little man was silent, staring reflectively out to sea. Patterson, naturally observant, was immediately struck by the look in those small, filmy blue eyes—a singular, fixed immobility of regard, at once empty and menacing, a glassy, almost dead expression in which was reflected all the vast space of the ocean on which he gazed, and something else, too, more elusive, harder to define, some curious quality of concentration that, refusing to be classified, nevertheless repelled. He asked:
“What’s your name?”
“Heywood. And yours?”
“Patterson. Are you alone here?”
The narrow blue eyes shifted, slipped from the sea to Patterson’s face, and then dropped.
“Alone? No; there are four of us.”
“And were they also marooned?”
As he uttered this last word he was conscious that it reflected the twentieth century even less than did the costume of his companion. Perhaps he was still light-headed after his ordeal. He added quickly:
“Were they also bound for Jamaica?”
“No,” Heywood answered briefly.
“And how long,” Patterson pursued laboriously, “have you been on the island?”
“That,” said his companion, after a pause, “is a mighty big question. Best wait before you ask it. Or, better still, ask it, not of me, but of the Captain.”
“You’re damned uncivil. Who’s the Captain?”
“Another castaway, like ourselves. And yet not, perhaps, so much alike. Yonder, behind the palms on the cliff, is his hut.”
“I wouldn’t mind going there. Will you take me?”
“No,” said Heywood in a surly tone.
“Good God!” exclaimed Patterson. “I shall believe you if you tell me they marooned you for your ill-manners. I’ve swam about eight miles, and need rest and sleep. If you’ve a hut, then take me to it.”
“The Captain’ll bide no one in his hut but himself and one other person. That person is not myself.”
“Then where do you sleep? In the trees, like the baboons I hear chattering on the hill?”
“No,” Heywood answered, still looking out to sea. “I’ve a comrade in my hut, which is small, since I built it for myself. A comrade who was flung ashore here when a great ship struck an iceberg.”
“An iceberg?” Patterson’s attention was suddenly arrested. “An iceberg in these regions? Are you trying to make a fool of me, or have you been here so long that your wits are going? And, by the way, tell me this: how do you try to attract the attention of passing ships? Do you light bonfires, or wave flags?”
“No ships pass,” said Heywood.
There was another silence. It was almost dark; already the deep iris of the sky was pierced by stars, and it was as though a silver veil had been dragged across the glitter of the ocean. Behind them, on the cliffs, two lights winked steadily; Patterson judged these to proceed from the huts mentioned by his companion. Then came the sound of soft footsteps, and they were no longer two shadows there on the dusky sands, but three.
“Hallo, stranger!” said a casual voice.
Patterson turned abruptly to distinguish in the grayness a sharp, pale face with a shock of tousled hair. A young man, gaunt-looking and eager, clad normally enough in a dark sweater and trousers.
“And this is a hell of a nice island, I don’t think,” the stranger pursued, thrusting his hands into his pockets. He had a strong Cockney accent. Patterson was enchanted by the very prosaicness of his appearance; he brought with him sanity; walking as he did on faery, moon-drenched shores, he was blessed, being the essence of the commonplace.
“Name of Judd. Dicky Judd. I suppose you’re all in. Been swimming, ain’t you?”
“Yes. And this fellow Heywood won’t take me to his hut. Says it’s full. Can you do anything about it?”
