Robert Lionel, page 4
The inn-keeper took a rtlassive ir9n key from the boar< above the bar and showed him the way up to tlle rOOD
overlooking the courtyard. "Here you are, sir. I hop you'll be very comfortable, and I certainly hope you won leave us quite so suddenly and unexpectedly as the prf vious gentleman."
"I hope so, 'too," said Mike Grafton.
The inn-keeper brought some clothing. "I hope these'
fit you fairly well, sir, but you're a considerable sight taller than I am. However, they're the best I can find, and in these circumstances I don't suppose you'll mind very much."
"Not at all," said Grafton. "I assure you I appreciate your help. There are times when clothes are worth more than gold, my friend."
"Aye, that's very true, sir," said the inn-keeper. "That is very true indeed." They exchanged glances.
No doubt he's written me off as a spy, thought Mike.
No doubt he has seen so many spies, what with England, Austria, France and Russia all involved. But as long; my money or my watch is good, he'll be happy. He locked the door and slid home the heavy iron bolts, taking the candle which the inn-keeper had left and looking.'
carefully around the room.
He was struck with curiosity by some little fragments of paper in the fireplace. They had obviously been burnt, yet not with any purpose of lighting a fire, for there was neither kindling nor logs available. They had been burnt with one purpose only. Somebody wanted them safely destroyed. There must have been some pretty interesting contents in those papers. Grafton found one, the edge of which was only charred and not completely consumed. . . .
He picked it up and found to his amazement that it was written in good, legible English. It was an educated hand that had written the words, and he remembered that the man who had so mysteriously disappeared, and for whom a search of the inn yard was progressing at thAt very moment, had been an English gentleman. He wondered who he could have been. And then he remembered something else--the sealed package which he now had in his own pocket. He wondered if there was any connection between them.
Chapter Three
The Manuscript
With trembling fingers Mike Grafton broke open the seals of the package which the vanished man had dropped. It contained two or three sheets of closely written parch-ment. The writing matched the writing on the fragmelnts he had taken from the grate, in every possible detail.
Grafton began to read by the uncertain light of the flicker-ing candle, and as he read, his interest grew with every paragraph:
"Whosoever may find these documents, I wish it to be known that my name is Benjamin Bathurst. I was born in London, 14th March, 1774, and in the year 1807
I was sent to Vienna with important dispatches by the British Government. But I am getting ahead of myself, for I wish to give first some more details of my family background, so that the finder may be able to inform my parents and my beloved wife Phillida should anything un-toward happen to me on this mission. I am surrounded by enemies on every hand, and my fear of treachery, both within my own party and from outside, grows with every
passing day. My father is Henry Bathurst, the Lord Bishop of Norwich, and I was brought up in Norwich Episcopal Palace. Our family home is at Cirencester, in dIe beautiful old English peace of Bathurst Park. As I sit in the room of this miserable inn, writing what may be the last words my pen shall ever set down, I am all too aware that I would exchange all my worldly wealth to be back once more in the sanctuary of our ancestral home. But fate has decreed otherwise, or so it seems to me, and as the noble Bard of Avon says, 'Some have prominence, if not grea1ness, unwillingly thrust upon them.'
"There have been prominent men in our family before.
My ancestor the Earl of Bathurst, who was born in 1684, was a noble scholar, a friend of Swift, Addison and Prior.
The third Earl was born in 1762, and is now one of our great and prominent statesmen. My father was Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and was later an Incumbent at Durham. He is a wonderful, godly old man, and has traveled extensively during the course of his ministry.
Now, as to myself, I will go back to the purpose in hand.
Every footstep outside the door warns me that time may be running out. How strange time is-but I digress again."
The words sprang up and hit Grafton with the force of living things. It was odd, he thought, that this Benjamin Bathurst had written that phrase, for it was time which had somehow swirled him back into the past by the inge-nuity of that 24th century scientist of the Resistance Movement. It had indeed saved him from the attention of the security police, but placed him in a predicament stranger-and even more terrible.-"in spring, this year, Lord Mulgrave appointed me as Secretary of the Legation at the Court of Stockholm, and afterwards I was made En-voy Extraordinary to the Court of Vienna, on an important secret mission, which as you may well guess, concerned our present struggle with Napoleon. I enclose at this point a copy of a letter which I sent to my friend Williams. I wrote the letter at the beginning of June when I was' in the city of Pest and I copy it simply because I fear that the original has not reached my friend. Should this prove to be the case, perhaps you, the unknown finder of this package, will convey my words to him. Here, then, is the letter.
My dear Phil,
It would be useless going over what has happened to me since my being on this station, where I have hitherto witnessed scarcely anything but distress and misfortune; I got to Vienna the very day of the terrible account from the Danube, and have seen little since to cheer the scene.
The desperate resolution of the Austrians keeps pace with the military blunders they improve upon daily. No reverses can correct, no experiences instruct them. A cause quite sacred, pursued with fanatic zeal. An in-comparable army and resources without end, an yield to the - ascendant of our abominable opponent and his superior military skill. A miracle, or another battle of Aspern-which was little less-may restore us, but scarcely any other effort. I cannot say, my dear Phil. I am quite in Paradise through a very flattering situation, and immediate action in events which inspire the deepest in-
terest atone a little for the separation from PhiIlida and a variety of other inconvenien~.'
"It may not mean much to you, but my friend will understand it. Perhaps I am lacking in modesty, but my friends tell me that I have promise. Some indeed have gone so far as to say that as a diplomat I show occasional flashes of brilliance. They tell me also that my disposition is sanguine. Yon, who have never met me, will have to judge what little you can from these words I leave behind.
I have heard no word from my parents and my family for some long time. for I have been traveling incognito by a circuitous route, tQ avoid being recognized by the French.
Before sitting down to write and seal this message, I have gone carefully through all my diplomatic papers, and burned anything which might be of use to our abominable opponent. I haye many suspicions of my enemies, and perhaps, unknown finder, should you turn out to be a friend, you will make those suspicions known. There is Kraus, the messenger who travels with me; I neither like nor trust the man. Yet I may be misjudging him. Above all, if you who find this package, especially so if you find it upon my corpse, on no account make Kraus your confi-dant, for I have my suspicions that he is secretly in the pay of the enemy. Also, very foolishly, I pulled out my watch and my purse, which is wellstocked, in the kitchen of this inn, not so very long back, and I saw the avaricious greed in the eyes of an ostler and a postillion. I wonder if they plan some mischief against me. I have also quarreled, understandably, with one of my servants, and he, in a fit of temper, has sworn to revenge himself. Perhaps I may fall by his rebellious hand. To try and throw them off the track, two nights back I rode, secretly and alone, to a Consul I know several miles away, near the seacoast. When I reached his house, a girl carrying a candle opened the door to me, her hand on her forehead, shielding her eyes against the light of the candle she bore. I wore my cap and had my roquelaure wrapped around me. As she opened the door, a keen wind blew out the light she carried. I asked if the Consul was at home, and she replied that he was not.
She then asked me my name, and I answered, 'Never mind that, but tell your master that an English gentleman has called and will see him at the Post House tomorrow, early.' I went to the Post House and waited as long as I dared, but he did not arrive, and I rode back to Perleberg.
I heard, in the very hour that I penned this, that the boat in which I had intended to cross to Sweden is reported to be lost. There is another fact which I must state. Should my body be found with marks of violence upon it, or should it be found in circumstances which might lead the unknowing to suppose that I took my own "life, I write here, as solemnly as I could aver anything on the great Day of Judgment, that I have no reason so to do. I have lost no money at play. I have been guilty of no dishonourable misconduct. If I do not reach England safely, I shall certainly die by a hand other than my own. I fear the French, I fear the Russians, I fear my own party, above' aU I fear the Count d'Entraigues. I fear him, master spy that he is-who knows which side those bloodstained hands work for? And here I must copy another letter in case the original did not reach its destination. To me, it is the most
important part of this document. rpray that you who find these last words, wheilier you be friend or foe, that you convey this, at least, to my beloved wife, Phillida Bathurst.
I dispatched the original letter from Buda on October 14th of this year, and I give a copy here below: My dearest Phillida,
I am able to give you a few words of intelligence of me, my dearest, by Heliogoland, though hardly more, by the smallness of the package 1 am obliged to send by this channel. Things are in the most desperate condition, and if Bonaparte can be removed from Vienna without some very signal catastrophe to Austria, the utmost of our hopes will be fulfilled. My fate, of course will be decided among the other Articles of the Peace. If the intercourse with England is put an end to, which is next to certain, tonight I shall try to make my escape. But should I prove unsuccessful, I trust that this package may reach its destination.'
"There is one word more I would wish to say to you, the unknown finder, and that is this. As a last rose of de-coy, to throw my enemies off my track, I have written a letter, whose contents are much the contents of this package, and have hidden it in an old pair of oVa"
trousers. Those overalls I have entrusted, together with five guineas in English gold, to an old woman of thiS
village whom I believe I can trust, not so much for her character's sake as for the gold that I have given her. Her task is simple, should I disappear, as I intend to of my own volition and not at the hands of my enemies. Should I disappear and be able to make my way safely through the clutches of my foes to the sanctuary of England once more, to give me a little more time, she is to produce these trousers, after my disappearance has been spread abroad, and she is to say that she found them in a wood on the banks of the Elbe. I shall, of course, by traveling in a completely different direction, a direction which must re..
main a secret even from you, my unknown friend-or my unknown enemy. Time has gone. There is so much left un-said which I wish to say. But time is time, and waits for no man. The worst master and the best servant in the whole of creation is the clock on the wall of the Palace of life. And so, I wilJ sign myself, dear sir, or madam, whoever you may be, hopefully yours,
Benjamin Bathurst."
The manuscript ended, but Grafton read it through again and again. His heart felt strangely touched, by the outpouring of the young English nobleman's very soul into what must have been his last message and he felt a strange fellow feeling, and a bond of sympathy with this man who had died five hundred years before his own time. . . . Yet as he read, he thought of the fleeting figure who had flashed past him in the grey mist, dropping its precious package as it Passed. He knew that whatever else may have happened to the diplomat, Benjamin Bathurst was by no means dead in the commonly accepted sense. Vanished from the world of men, beyond their ken and their contact, yes, but M had not gone through the door by which his fellow 91ortals were all destined to pass. As he sat in the silence of that upper room, which the missing diplomat had so recently vacated, Mike Grafton pondered many
things. And as he pondered, with a strange feeling of guilt, he realized that his own precipitous flight from the powers of the Eurasian dictator were, in all probability, more than partly responsible for the disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst in the cloud of grey mist. He tried the best he, could, for he was a fine technician and scientist in his own right, to understand the principles of the time machine, but it was far beyond his comprehension. It occurred to him however, that in all principles of science, nature and the basic laws of the universe abhor a vacuum above all else. It was therefore very necessary for a vacuum to be filled-to be filled by an equivalent amount of either mat.
ter or energy, depending upon the exact nature of the empty valency to be taken up. If in some strange way the old freedom fighter sci,entist, back in the Perleberg of 2309, had created a machine which could produce a tem.
porary rift in the time dimension of the continuum, that rift, fault or vorrex-eall it what you will-had to be filled. To use a physical analogy, he, Mike Grafton, had been displaced from his own natural environment in the 24th century. He had been standing at a preciSe spot in space at a precise instant of time. Rifts, geologically, he knew, had a tendency to run in sharp vertical lines. They ran with precision. They responded to certain inalienable laws.
Therefore, if he was to disappear, he must disappear at the extremity of a certa,in time cycle. Anything which would fill his place must, in all probability, be standing at the other end of the vortex, the anipodes of the cycle from which he had been drawn. At that precise spot five hundred years ago stood Benjamin Bathurst. He had walked around the head of his horses, with his sealed document half in and half out of his hand. He had been caught by a strange fourth-dimensional time vortex, and he had never been seen again in his own world. It was a terrifying conclusion, but a conclusion which Grafton had to accept.
Chapter Four
Double PursuIt
Grafton had no more time to spend pursuing the manuscript. There was the sudden sound of footsteps on the stairs; heavy footsteps, footsteps which in any age could meam only one thing . . . trouble! There was a thunderous knocking on the door.
"Who's there?" he asked in his best approach to archaic German.
"Les douaniers," roared a harsh voice from without.
"Francais. Vive Napoleon."
Devil take Napoleon, thought Graftoo, and quite suddenly he realized what had happened. Either the innkeeper, or one of those in the bar who had seen him ascend the stairs had tipped off the local Guardier Poste, and the captain had put two arid two together and made five. The mysterious Englishman they had been watching the previous night disappears, another man appears, just as mysteriously, comes to the inn, and is now ensconced in the room which the previous man occupied. Some secret message has probably been left in a pre--arranged hiding place in this room. The men are working hand in glove; If
one is.an English spy, so is the other. . . . If one is on a dangerous diplomatic mission, so perhaps is the other; indeed, it might even be a clever ruse--the first man returned in disguise. Grafton realized the thoughts that would go tbIough the nasty suspicious little mind of the local French guard's captain. He had had enough experience with the Secret Police in his own century not to wish to repeat it here. Methods were probably much auder, possibly much more effective! But after all, he told himself, it matters very little whether a man meets his end by a rough lead musket ball, or whether he fries as a power charge hits him.
The ultimate result is identical. . . " The thunderous knocking became even more thunderous, and Grafton raised an eyebrow in appreciation of the fortitude of the door. But he knew that, tough as it was, it certainly could not last forever. The heavy old four-poster was the obvious barricade, and luckily he was a strong man. It was the work of two sweating minutes to haUll it across the room and fasten it securely against the reverberating door.
He looked out the window. In the dim, lamplit courtyard, he could see the ground scarcely fifteen feet below him.
There was no one guarding the window, as far as he could see. He crossed the room in tbIee quick strides, flung wide the narrow casement, and scrambled hastily through the window. A short drop and his themlo-plastic boots con-tactedthe cobblestones, and with a light athletic spring, he was racing on his way.
As he ran tbIough the darlmess, he heard muffled noises behind him, and realized that his barricade had parted company with the door. He saw dark figures silhouetted against the window, and a fuselage of musket shots rattied around him in the darkness. Friendly bunch, he thought, as he ducked into the shadow of a tree, and a cold savage anger began to grow within him as ball after ball snicked the ground around his cover. The thought of being injured in an age when medical scie.nce was primitive, to put it mildly, did not appeal to him particularly. He had no particular quarrel with these guardiers on the other hand, and they had no particular quarrel with him, if they had taken the trouble to find out. The thought only served to increase his anger. "I'll give 'em muskets," he muttered savagely and, hauling the power blaster from his belt, he loosed an energy bolt in the direction of the inn window. The effect was eleotrifying, both literally and metaphorically. The offensive group of militia seemed to be flung back from the window as though they had been struck by lightning-which in effect they had.
Man-made lightning; deadly lightning; the ultimate destructive weapon in the field of hand arms that the technology of the 24th century could produ.ce. The douanier reeled back amid the smoking wreckage of the room. Some were dead on their feet; others were dying.
Two survived. There were no more musket shots. . . '.
