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“Giordano, please!” said Mr. George. “We have none of us had a particularly good day today—”
“How is … he doing?” asked Charlotte quietly, with a sideways glance at me.
“As you might expect in the circumstances,” replied Mr. George gravely.
Once again Charlotte cast me a brief, searching glance. I stared darkly back. Did it give her some kind of sick satisfaction to know something I didn’t know, although she thought it would be of burning interest to me?
“Oh, nonsense,” said Xemerius. “He’s doing fine, trust me, darling! He just ate an enormous veal schnitzel with French fries and green vegetables. Does that sound like as you might expect in the circumstances?”
Giordano was getting cross because no one was listening to him. “I just hope I won’t be held to blame!” he said shrilly, pushing his little chair aside. “I have worked with unacknowledged talents, I have worked with the truly great men of this world, but never, never in my life has anything like this come my way.”
“My dear Giordano, you know how much we esteem you here. And no one would have been more suitable to teach Gwyneth the…” Here Mr. George fell silent, because Giordano had pushed his lower lip forward in a sulky pout, throwing his head with its cement hairdo right back.
“Just don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he snapped. “That’s all I ask.”
“Very well,” said Mr. George, sighing. “I … yes, well, I’ll pass the message on. Coming, Gwyneth?”
I’d already taken off the hooped skirt and hung it up over the piano stool. “See you sometime,” I said to Giordano.
He was still pouting. “I am afraid there will be no avoiding that.”
* * *
ON THE WAY down to the old alchemical laboratory, which I knew almost by heart now, even blindfolded, Mr. George told me what had happened in the morning. He was a little surprised that Mr. Marley hadn’t passed the news on to me, and I didn’t go to the trouble of explaining.
They had sent Gideon back to the past by chronograph (Mr. George wasn’t telling me what year), to carry out a little errand (Mr. George didn’t say just what that was either), and two hours later, they’d found him unconscious in a corridor not far from the chronograph room. With a lacerated wound on his forehead, obviously made by something hard and heavy. Gideon couldn’t remember anything about it, but the attacker must have been lying in wait for him.
“But who…?”
“We don’t know. It’s worrying, particularly in the present situation. We had him thoroughly examined, and there was no sign of any puncture on him to suggest that his blood had been taken—”
“Wouldn’t the blood from his forehead have been enough?” I asked, shuddering slightly.
“Possibly,” agreed Mr. George. “But if someone had … well, wanted to make sure, that’s not how he’d have gone about getting Gideon’s blood. There are countless explanations. No one knew Gideon was going to be there that evening, so it’s unlikely that someone was lying in wait for him on purpose. It’s much more likely to have been a chance meeting. In certain years, these cellars were swarming with subversive, lowlife characters—smugglers, criminals, creatures of the underworld in every sense. My own belief is that it was an unfortunate coincidence.…” He cleared his throat. “In any case, Gideon seems to have survived the adventure pretty well—at least, Dr. White found no serious injuries. So the two of you will be able to set off on Sunday at midday as planned, to attend that soirée.” He laughed a little. “Funny idea: a soirée in the middle of the day on Sunday.”
Yes, ha ha, hilarious. “Where’s Gideon now?” I asked impatiently. “In hospital?”
“No, he’s resting—at least, I hope so. He only went to hospital for a scan, and as it found nothing, thank God, he discharged himself. The fact is, he had an unexpected visit from his brother yesterday evening.”
“I know,” I said. “Mr. Whitman registered Raphael at my school today.”
I heard Mr. George sigh heavily. “The boy ran away from home after getting into some kind of trouble along with his friends. Falk has this crazy idea of keeping Raphael in England. In these turbulent times, we all have better things to do—Gideon in particular—than bother about difficult boys, but Falk could never refuse Selina anything, and it seems this is Raphael’s only chance of finishing high school with some kind of certificate, away from the friends who have such a bad influence on him.”
“Selina … is that Gideon and Raphael’s mother?”
“Yes,” said Mr. George. “They both inherited those striking green eyes from her. Here we are. You can take the blindfold off now.”
This time we were alone in the chronograph room.
“Charlotte said that in the circumstances you’d be calling off our planned visit to the eighteenth century,” I suggested hopefully. “Or postponing it? Just to give Gideon time to recover, and maybe I could practice a bit more—”
Mr. George shook his head. “No, we won’t be doing that. The timing of your visits was very important to the count. Gideon and you will go to the soirée the day after tomorrow—that’s definite. Any particular year you’d like to elapse to today?”
“No,” I said, taking care to sound indifferent. “I don’t suppose it makes any difference if I’m shut up in a cellar, does it?”
Mr. George was carefully taking the chronograph out of its velvet wrapping. “No, it doesn’t. We usually send Gideon to the year 1953, a nice quiet year. We just have to take care he doesn’t meet himself.” He smiled. “I imagine it would feel rather eerie to be shut up somewhere with your double.” He patted his round little paunch and looked thoughtful. “How about 1956? Another quiet year.”
“Sounds perfect,” I said.
