Blaylock, James P - Langdon St Ives 02 Read Online Free Page A

as shortsighted as
Hargreaves and every bit as useful. Narbondo had worked devilishly hard over
the years at making himself feared, loathed, and,
ultimately, respected.
                   The surprising internal eruption of Mount Hjarstaad would throw the fear into them. They'd be
quaking over their breakfasts at that very moment, the lot of them wondering
and gaping. Beards would be wagging. Dark suspicions would be mouthed. Where
was Narbondo? Had he been seen in London ? Not for months. He had threatened this
very thing, hadn't he?— an eruption above the Arctic Circle , just to demonstrate the seriousness of his
intent, the degree to which he held the fate of the world in his hands.
                   Very soon—within days—the comet would pass
close enough to the earth to provide a spectacular display for the
masses—foolish creatures. The iron core of the thing might easily be pulled so
solidly by the earth's magnetic field that the comet would hurtle groundward,
slamming the poor old earth into atoms and all the gaping multitudes with it.
What if, Nar-bondo had suggested, what if a man were to give the earth a push,
to propel it even closer to the approaching star and so turn a long shot into a
dead cert, as a blade of the turf might put it? And with that, the art of
extortion had been elevated to a new plane.
                   Well, Dr. Ignacio Narbondo was that man. Could
he do it? Narbondo grinned. His advertisement of two weeks past had drawn a
sneer from the Royal Academy , but Mount Hjarstaad would wipe the sneers from their faces.
They would wax grave. Their grins would set like plaster of Paris. What had the
poet said about that sort of thing? "Gravity was a mysterious carriage of
the body to cover the defects of the mind.'' That was it. Gravity would answer
for a day or two, but when it faded into futility they would pay, and pay well.
Narbondo set in to whistle again, this time out of the innocence of good cheer,
but the effect on Hargreaves was so immediately consumptive and maddening that
Narbondo gave it off abruptly. There was no use baiting the man into ruination
before the job was done.
                   He thought suddenly of Langdon St. Ives. St.
Ives was nearly unavoidable. For the fiftieth time Narbondo regretted killing
the woman on that rainy London morning one year past. He hadn't meant to. He had meant to bargain with
her life. It was desperation had made him sloppy and wild. It seemed to him
that he could count his mistakes on the fingers of one hand. When he made them,
though, they weren't subtle mistakes. The best he could hope for was that St.
Ives had sensed the desperation in him, that St. Ives lived day-to-day with the
knowledge that if he had only eased up, if he hadn't pushed Narbondo so
closely, hadn't forced his hand, the woman might be alive today, and the two of
them, St. Ives and her, Hving bhssfully together, pottering in the turnip
garden. Narbondo watched the back of Hargreaves's head. If it was a just world,
then St. Ives would blame himself. He was precisely the man for such a job as
that—a martyr of the suffering type. The very thought of St. Ives made him
scowl, though. Narbondo had been careful, but somehow the Dover air seemed to whisper "St. Ives"
to him at every turning. He pushed his suspicions out of his mind, reached for
his coat, and stepped silently from the room, carrying his teacup with him. On
the morning street outside he smiled grimly at the orange sun that burned
through the evaporating fog, then he threw the dregs of his tea, cup and all,
over a vine-draped stone wall and strode away east up Archcliffe Road , composing in his mind a letter to the Royal Academy .
                   " damn me!"
mumbled Bill Kraken through the fingers mashed against his mouth. He wiped away
furiously at the tea leaves and tea that ran down his neck and collar. The cup
that had hit him on the ear had fallen and broken on the