Chasing Schrödinger’s Cat - A Steampunk Novel (22 page)

Chapter
XXXXXXII:

Back
On The Roof - A Subaltern’s Protest - A Firearms Mishap

I
lifted
myself from the asphalt and found myself once again in the presence of Second
Lieutenant Fellows and his platoon of part-time warriors.
 
Sarah and Percy were with them, manacled
together and guarded by the acne-faced corporal who, more than ever, looked
like he wished he was back at his butcher shop.
 
I expected I would soon find myself similarly restrained but Alistair
Fox had other plans.

“Shoot him,” he shouted.

“Sir?” said the Second Lieutenant.

“He is a foreigner wearing Her
Majesty’s uniform under false pretenses.
 
That makes him a spy.
 
Shoot him.”

“Oh, I say,” said the Second
Lieutenant.
 
“You can’t just go around
shooting people without trial you know.”

“The Devil I can’t.
 
I’ll do it myself.”
 
My Sam Brown belt and holster were still
lying where I had left them next to the door of the Particle Beam Generator’s
control cubicle.
 
Alistair Fox stooped
and removed the Adams revolver from its holster.
 
He cocked the massive pistol and assumed the
one-arm dueling stance he had used when he shot Schrödinger.
 
I heard the crack of a pistol shot but
nothing hit me.
 
“Damn and blast,” Fox
said, and cocked the pistol again.
 
 
He pulled the trigger a second time and the
pistol exploded, removing his right thumb and forefinger and leaving the rest
of his hand in bloody tatters.

Fox cried out in horror and
surprise and staggered backward into the cubicle, tripping over my Sam Brown
belt.
 
He stretched his left hand
backwards to steady himself and hit the dimensional translator’s glass-cased
oscillator, snapping it off at the base.
 
There was a bright flash of light followed by a loud explosion that
rained debris all over the roof.
  
When
the dust settled, all that remained at the base of the tower were a few blobs
of molten brass and a small heap of smoldering ashes that might, or might not
have been human remains.

Chapter
XXXXXXIII:

Lord
Newford’s
Office – An Explanation

“I
’m sorry I
couldn’t return your service pistol,” I said, taking another gratifying sip of my
father-in-law’s scotch.
 
Sarah and I were
in his oak-paneled office being de-briefed, although Lord Newford called it
‘sitting down for a little chat.’

“You brought Sarah back and that is
all that matters,” Lord Newford said.
 
“Although I must confess I am puzzled by the Adams’ failure, happy
though the result may have been.
 
That revolver
served me faithfully on three continents.”

“It wasn’t the pistol’s fault,
Father,” Sarah chimed in.
 
She went on to
tell him about the wax bullets we had used in Chisholm’s Wild West Show.

“For once, Lord
Newford
,
your daughter is wrong,” I said, when she had finished.

“Then why didn’t Fox’s first shot
kill you?” she asked.

“It’s kind of you not to sound
disappointed,” I said.
 
“I resolved to
try not to kill anyone else after Bennie Sherman had his “accident.”
 
I especially wanted to find a way to minimize
the danger of me shooting someone with Lord Newford’s pistol.
 
But I also knew there was a good chance we
could find ourselves in a situation where we would need to defend ourselves so
I came up with a compromise.”

“What sort of compromise can you
make with a revolver?”

“I removed the bullet from the
first cartridge in the cylinder and poured out most of the powder.
 
Then I replaced the bullet and put the
cartridge back in its chamber.
 
That way,
if I did have to fire the gun, the first bullet would not be deadly.
 
If I was still in trouble after that I would
still have five full loads left.”

“But why did the gun explode?”

“I think what must have happened is
that I poured out too much powder and the first bullet didn’t even make it out
of the barrel.
 
Fox’s second bullet hit
the first and the gun blew up.”

“That was lucky,” Sarah said.

“You do your enterprising husband a
disservice,” Lord Newford said, as he refilled my glass.
 
“As your great uncle Benjamin Disraeli once observed,
‘We make our own fortunes and call them fate.’”

Epilogue:

As you may have gathered, Lord Newford
was reinstated as the head of Her Majesty’s Intelligence Service.
  
At his suggestion, the Minister of Science
has retained me as a special advisor on new scientific developments.
 
I probably can’t protect them from making all
the mistakes we made but I’m sure going to try.

My new father in law didn’t stop
there.
 
He bought the Lascar’s Head and
gave it to Percy Cowan who took to landlording like a duck takes to water.
 
He frequently regales his customers with
tales of his adventures with the American desperado, Wild Bob
Liddel
.

Instead of a wedding present, Sarah
and I asked Lord Newford to give us three first class tickets to America which
we mailed to Joe Chisholm.
 
Chisholm
traded them in for third class tickets so he could take the Roma with him.
 
He now runs a San Francisco restaurant
specializing in Roma cookery.

Sarah hired Percy’s mother, Edith,
as nursemaid to our daughter, Fiona.
 
Edith, of course, does not trust me an inch and hovers protectively whenever
Fiona and I get together to play.
 
She is
even more insistent about keeping Max out of the nursery on the grounds that ‘a
cat will suck the baby’s breath.’

Sarah has enrolled at London
University as their first-ever female medical student.
 
She will graduate in two years.
 
Lord Newford offered to buy her a Harley
Street practice but she told him she plans to set up a clinic in the East
End.
 
When her astonished father asked
why, she told him she wanted ‘a better class of clientele.’