THE SCI-FI COLLECTION OF EDGAR WALLACE. Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
bed and the overhanging osiers. A water-rat was swimming across the still water and this spectacle decided her.
“No; I think I will come with you,” she said; and added, “I don’t like rats.”
“That was a vole,” said Tim, shying a stone in the direction of the swimming rodent.
Her pretty face puckered in an expression of distaste.
“It looks horribly like a rat to me,” she said. Chap poured out the tea and the girl was raising it to her lips when her eyes caught sight of the man who was watching them from between the trees, and she had hard work to suppress the scream that rose to her lips.
“What is it?”
Tim had seen her face change and now, following the direction of her eyes, he too saw the stranger.
There was nothing that was in the slightest degree sinister about the stranger; he was indeed the most commonplace figure Tim had ever seen. A short, stout man with a round and reddish face, which was decorated with a heavy ginger moustache; he stood twiddling his watch chain, his small eyes watching the party.
“Hello!” said Tim as he walked toward the stranger. “We have permission to land here.”
He thought the man was some sort of caretaker or bailiff of “Helmwood.”
“Got permission?” he repeated. “Of course you have — which of you is Lensman?”
“That’s my name,” smiled Tim, and the man nodded.
“He is expecting you and West and Miss Elsie West.”
Tim’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. He had certainly promised the professor that he would call one day during vacation, but he had not intended taking Chap nor his sister. It was only by accident he had met his school friend at Bisham that morning, and Chap had decided to come with him.
As though divining his thoughts, the stout man went on: “He knows a lot of things. If he’s not mad he’s crook. Where did he get all his information from? Why, fifteen years ago he hadn’t fifty pounds! This place cost him ten thousand, and the house cost another ten thousand; and he couldn’t have got his instruments and things under another ten thousand!”
Tim had been too much taken aback to interrupt. “Information? I don’t quite understand…?”
“About stocks and things…he’s made a hundred thousand this year out of cotton. How did he know that the boll-weevil was going to play the devil with the South, eh? How did he know? And when I asked him just now to tell me about the corn market for a friend of mine, he talked to me like a dog!”
Chap had been listening openmouthed. “Are you a friend of Mr. Colson?” he asked.
“His cousin,” was the reply. “Harry Dewes by name. His own aunt’s child — and his only relation.”
Suddenly he made a step towards them and his voice sank to a confidential tone.
“You young gentlemen know all about him — he’s got delusions, hasn’t he? Now, suppose I brought a couple of doctors to see him, maybe they’d like to ask you a few questions about him…”
Tim, the son of a great barrister, and himself studying for the bar, saw the drift of the question and would have understood, even if he had not seen the avaricious gleam in the man’s eyes.
“You’d put him into an asylum and control his estate, eh?” he asked with a cold smile. “I’m afraid that you cannot rely upon us for help.”
The man went red.
“Not that exactly,” he said awkwardly. “And listen, young fellow..,” he paused. “When you see Colson, I’d take it as a favour if you didn’t mention the fact that you’ve seen me…I’m going to walk down to the lock…you’ll find your way up between those poplars…so long!”
And turning abruptly he went stumbling through the bushes and was almost at once out of sight.
“What a lad!” said Chap admiringly. “And what a scheme! And to jump it at us straight away almost without an introduction — that fellow will never need a nerve tonic.”
“How did Mr. Colson know I was coming?” asked Elsie in wonder.
Tim was not prepared with an answer. After some difficulty they found the scarcely worn track that led up through the trees, and a quarter of an hour’s stiff climb brought them to the crest and in view of the house.
Tim had expected to find a residence in harmony with the unkempt grounds. But the first view of “Helmwood” made him gasp. A solid and handsome stone house stood behind a broad stretch of shaven lawn. Flower beds bright with the blooms of late summer surrounded the lawn and bordered the walls of the house itself. At the farther end, but attached to the building, was a stone tower, broad and squat, and on the top of this was erected a hollow structure — crisscrossed without any apparent order or method — with a network of wires which glittered in the sunlight.
“A silver wire-box aerial!” said Chap. “That is a new idea, isn’t it? Gosh, Tim! Look at the telescope!”
By the side of the tower was the bell-roof of a big observatory. The roof was closed, so that Chap’s “telescope” was largely imaginary.
“Great Moses!” said Chap awestricken. “Why, it’s as big as the Lick!”
Tim was impressed and astounded. He had guessed that the old science master was in comfortable circumstances, and knew that indeed he could afford the luxury of a car, but he had never dreamt that the professor was a man wealthy enough to own a house like this and an observatory which must have cost thousands to equip.
“Look, it’s turning!” whispered Elsie.
The big, square superstructure on the tower was moving slowly, and then Tim saw two projecting cones of some crystalline material, for they glittered dazzlingly in the sunlight.
“That is certainly new,” he said. “It is rather like the gadget they are using for the new beam transmission; or whatever they call it — and yet it isn’t—”
As he stood there, he saw a long trench window open and a bent figure come out on to the lawn. Tim hastened towards the man of science and in a few minutes Chap was introducing his sister.
“I hope you didn’t mind my coming, sir,” said Chap. “Lensman told me he was calling.”
“You did well to come,” said Mr. Colson courteously. “And it is a pleasure to meet your sister.”
Elsie was observing him closely and her first impression was one of pleasant surprise. A thin, cleanshaven old man, with a mass of white hair that fell over his collar and bushy eyebrows, beneath which twinkled eyes of deepest blue. There was a hint of good humour in his delicately-moulded face. Girl-like, she first noted his extraordinary cleanliness. His linen was spotless, his neat black suit showed no speck of dust.
“You probably met a — er — relative of mine,” he said gently. “A crude fellow — a very crude fellow. The uncouth in life jars me terribly. Will you come in, Miss West?”
They passed into a wide hall and down a long, broad corridor which was lighted on one side by narrow windows through which the girl had a glimpse of a neatly flagged courtyard, also surrounded by gay flowerbeds.
On the other side of the corridor, doors were set at intervals and it was on the second of these that Tim, in passing, read an inscription. It was tidily painted in small, gold lettering:
PLANETOID 127.
The professor saw the young man’s puzzled glance and smiled. “A little conceit of mine,” he said.
“Is that the number of an asteroid?” asked Tim, a dabbler in astronomy.
“No — you may search the Berlin