AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Good luck, ma petite,” she said as Dr. White led me out. I waved in what I thought was her direction by way of good-bye. Once again, it was an unpleasant feeling to be stumbling about in a void. All the same, the way was beginning to seem more familiar. And this time Robert kept warning me in advance. “Two more steps and now left through the secret doorway. Careful, mind the step. Another ten paces and then we come to the big staircase.”
“Great service you give here! Thanks a lot.”
“Let’s leave out the sarcasm,” said Dr. White.
“Why can you hear me and he can’t?” asked Robert sadly.
“I’m afraid I don’t know either,” I said, and I felt so sorry for him it was almost too much for me. “Is there anything you’d like to tell him?”
Robert did not reply.
“Glenda Montrose was right,” said Dr. White. “You really do have conversations with yourself.”
I put out my hand to feel my way along the wall. “Oh, I recognize this spot. Now there’s another step—yes, there it is—and after twenty-four footsteps, we turn right.”
“You’ve been counting!”
“Only out of boredom. Why are you so suspicious, Dr. White?”
“I am not at all suspicious. I trust you implicitly. At the moment. At the moment, you are behaving reasonably well, or at the worst you are only somewhat infected by your mother’s crazy notions. But no one knows what you’ll grow into, so I would be very sorry if you knew where the chronograph was kept.”
“The cellar can’t be all that large,” I said.
“You’ve no idea,” said Dr. White. “We’ve already lost people there.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” There was a touch of laughter in his voice, so I knew he was only joking. “Others have wandered around the passages for days before they found a way out.”
o;Yes.” Well, I said so anyway.
“So Gideon met the young Margaret this morning at the time of her second official date to elapse. She had been driven straight to the Temple after her first journey in time. And even as the preparations were being made to read her into the chronograph, she traveled for the second time. That’s the longest uncontrolled journey in time so far known to us. She was gone for over two hours.”
“Mr. George, you could leave out these minor details,” suggested Gideon, with a trace of impatience in his voice.
“Yes, yes. Where was I? Gideon visited Margaret when she was going to elapse, and once again he explained the story of the stolen chronograph to her, and the chance of putting things right with the second one.”
“Aha!” I interrupted. “So that’s how the older Margaret knew the whole story. Gideon had told her about it himself.”
“Yes, that looked like one possibility,” said Mr. George. “But yet again, the young Margaret wasn’t hearing the story for the first time.”
“So someone else had got in ahead of Gideon. Lucy and Paul again. They traveled into the past with the stolen chronograph to tell Margaret Tilney that, sooner or later, it was very likely that someone would turn up wanting to take some of her blood.”
Mr. George said nothing.
“So did she let you take her blood this time?”
“No,” said Mr. George. “She refused to let him have it.”
“Although at sixteen she wasn’t quite as obstinate as later, in her old age,” said Gideon. “This time she let me talk to her for a while. And finally she said that she would negotiate, but only with you.”
“With me?”
“She gave me your name. Gwyneth Shepherd.”
“But…” I chewed my lower lip while Mr. George and Gideon watched me closely. “I thought Paul and Lucy had disappeared before I was born. How could they know my name and tell this Margaret?”
“Yes, that’s the question,” said Mr. George. “You see, Lucy and Paul stole the chronograph in May of the year when you were born. First they hid in the present with it. For a few months, they cleverly managed to keep eluding the detectives employed by the Guardians, laying false trails and using other tricks. They moved from city to city and traveled over half of Europe with the chronograph. But we were coming closer and closer to their hiding place, and they realized that they could escape us for good only if they took refuge in the past with the chronograph. Unfortunately they had no intention of giving up. They defended their mistaken ideals uncompromisingly.” He sighed. “They were so young, so passionate.…” There was a slightly dreamy look in his eyes.
