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

stones of the garden.
He peered up over the wall at Narbondo's diminishing figure and added this last
unintended insult to the list of villainies he had suffered over the years at
Narbondo's hands.
                   He would have his turn yet. Why St. Ives
hadn't given him leave merely to beat the stuffing out of this devil Hargreaves
Kraken couldn't at all fathom. The man was a monster; there was no gainsaying
it. They could easily set off one of his own devices—hoist him on his own
filthy petard, so to speak. His remains would be found amid the wreckage of
infernal machines, built with his own hands. The world would have owed Bill
Kraken a debt.
                   But Narbondo, St. Ives had insisted, would
have found another willing accomplice. Hargreaves was only a pawn, and pawns
could be dealt with easily enough when the time came. St. Ives couldn't afford
to tip his hand, nor would he settle for anything less than fair play and
lawful justice. That was the crux of it. St. Ives had developed a passion for
keeping the Winders on his motivations. He would be driven by law and reason
and not fuddle things up with the odd emotion. Sometimes the man was scarcely
human.
                   Kraken crouched out from behind the wall and
slipped away in Narbondo's wake, keeping to the other side of the road when the
hunchback entered a stationer's, then circling round to the back when Narbondo
went in at the post office door. Kraken stepped through a dark, arched rear
entry, a ready lie on his lips in case he was confronted. He found himself in a
small deserted room, where he slid behind a convenient heap of crates, peeping
through slats at an enormously fat, stooped man who lumbered in and tossed
Narbondo's letter into a wooden bin before lumbering back out. Kraken snatched
up the letter, tucked it into his coat, and in a moment was back in the
sunlight, prying at the sealing wax with his index fmger. Ten minutes later he
was at the front door of the post office, grinning into the wide face of the
postman and mailing Narbondo's missive for the second time that morning.
     
                   “SURELY it's a bluff," Said Jack Owlesby,
scowling at Langdon St. Ives. The four of them sat on lawn chairs in the
Gardens, listening with half an ear to the lackluster tootings of a tired
orchestra. "What would it profit him to alert the Times? There'd be
mayhem. If it's extortion he's up to, this won't further his aim by an
inch."
                   "The threat of it might," replied
St. Ives. "If his promise to pitch the earth into the path of the comet
weren't taken seriously, the mere suggestion that the public be apprised of the
magnetic affinity of the comet and the earth might be. Extortion
on top of extortion. The one is pale alongside the other one. I grant
you that. But there could be a panic if an ably stated message were to reach
the right sort of journalist—or the wrong sort, rather." St. Ives paused
and shook his head, as if such panic wasn't to be contemplated. "What was
the name of that scoundrel who leaked the news of the threatened epidemic four
years ago?"
                  "Beezer, sir," said Hasbro.
"He's still in the employ of the Times, and, we must suppose, no less likely
to be in communication with the doctor today than he was then. He would be your
man, sir, if you wanted to wave the bloody shirt."
                   "I rather believe," said St. Ives,
grimacing at the raucous climax of an unidentifiable bit of orchestration,
"that we should pay this man Beezer a visit. We can't do a thing sitting
around Dover . Narbondo has agreed to wait four days for
a reply from the Academy. There's no reason to believe that he won't keep his
word—he's got nothing to gain by haste. The comet, after all, is ten days off.
We've got to suppose that he means just what he claims. Evil begets idiocy,
gentlemen, and there is no earthly way to tell how far down the path