Starcross (13 page)

In Which the Narrative Is Continued by Another Hand.

My name is Myrtle Evangeline Mumby. My brother, Arthur, has asked me to contribute my account of our adventures at Starcross for publication in his latest volume of memoirs. I was reluctant to do so at first, for it is
so
undignified to have adventures, and even more so to write about them afterward so that common people may read of them on omnibuses and the like. However, it occurs to me that if I do not do as Art asks, he will simply steal the relevant pages from my diary and publish them, as he did the last time, the little brute. So what follows is an account of all that befell me from the moment that Art and Mother were so rudely abducted. I present it here on the STRICT UNDERSTANDING that Mr Wyatt does NOT illustrate it with a picture of me in my night attire.

I was awoken on the night in question by a faint rapping or knocking sound. It took a while to rouse me, for I had been lost in the innocent wonderland of my girlish dreams. Indeed, I had been dreaming that Jack Havock, who until quite recently had been the unworthy recipient of my maidenly affections, was stood on my balcony in the starlight and was tapping at the windowpane.

At last the persistence of the noise roused me to wakefulness, and I leapt up, drew back the curtain and saw that Jack Havock
actually was
standing on my balcony and tapping at the windowpane!

Naturally, I do not approve of young men paying midnight visits to the balconies of young ladies. Especially if the young man in question has consistently failed to reply to the young lady’s letters, and held conversations with attractive foreigners in public places. I made shooing motions, and shut the curtains.

Myrtle in her night attire.

After a brief pause, the gentle, insistent tapping resumed. I went back to bed and pulled one of the pillows over my head, but I could still hear it. It was most vexing. Did Jack think that he could win back my affections by pursuing me in this unseemly manner? At last, driven almost to distraction, I stood up and opened the curtain again.

This time, he was pressing a crumpled scrap of paper to the glass. Upon it he had scrawled a single word:

DANGER

I opened the window and whispered angrily, ‘Jack Havock, your handwriting is a perfect disgrace, and anyway, what do you mean, “danger”?’

Jack, with no regard at all for the niceties of polite behaviour, pushed his way into my chamber and said, ‘I saw them starting up the stairs. Munk and Nipper and Grindle with ’em, and all in those d——d hats! They’ll be here any minute!’

‘Who will?’ I hissed, flapping my hands at him to beg him to speak quieter, for fear my mother should hear him in my room. But before he could answer there was a commotion outside the door. I heard Art shout out something, and then a crash, as if a chair or table had fallen over.
Then footsteps, other voices, and Mother’s voice crying, ‘Good Heavens, gentlemen! What is the meaning of this?’

I ran to the door, and opened it to reveal a scene most indescribably alarming. The living room of our suite seemed full of persons in evening dress, two of whom were holding Mother, while another wrestled with Art. I uttered a loud yet ladylike cry, and in another moment Jack had slammed the door shut and locked it.

‘But Mr Munkulus is out there!’ I cried. ‘And Mr Spinnaker! What are they doing?’

‘They’re not in their right minds,’ Jack expostulated. ‘Those d—— hats control ’em somehow!’

‘Oh, Heavens! Then we must help Art and Mama!’

‘We are too late!’ he cried. ‘Myrtle, you must come with me!’

I saw the sense in this suggestion, for someone had begun to batter against my bedroom door in the most intemperate way. So I followed Jack to the window and out on to the balcony. I did not entirely forget myself, I am glad to say, and as we passed the closet I reached in and snatched one of the mothproof calico bags in which I keep my dresses, so that I should have something decent to change into as soon as an opportunity presented itself.

Luckily a narrow fire escape descended from my balcony to the gravelled driveway behind the hotel, so there was no question of climbing down drainpipes or knotted ropes. Unshod as I was, my feet made no sound upon those iron stairs, though Jack, who was wearing a most disreputablelooking pair of old space boots, set up a dreadful clatter. Nevertheless, we reached the ground without further ado, and Jack hurried me across a starlit stretch of open promenade and stopped in the shadows of the beach cafe. The windows were shuttered. The canvas of a nearby Punch & Judy booth flapped softly in the wind, but all else was silent as the grave.

‘What
is
going on?’ I demanded.

‘Wish I knew,’ said Jack. ‘It was your mother that put me on to it, talking about hats at dinnertime. Made me remember some dream I keep having, some strangeness about a hat … So straight after dinner I hunted about in my room, and there in my closet I found a hatbox: Titfer’s Top-Notch Toppers.’

‘What is so surprising about that?’ I asked. ‘Everyone knows that Titfer’s hats are the finest in Known Space.’

‘That’s just it,’ said Jack. ‘They ain’t! Think, Myrtle – can you honestly say you’d even heard of Titfer’s Top-Notch
Toppers before you came to Starcross?’

‘Well …’

‘I guessed there was something strange about the hat in that box. So I didn’t go to sleep tonight, but sat up and watched it. And about a half-hour back I started to get this strange sensation, like the hat was asking me to put it on.’

‘Oh, come, Jack, a talking hat?’

‘It didn’t use words. It was just a feeling, an itch inside my head … I wish I’d brought Ssil or the Twins here – they might have been able to explain it.
I
can’t. I only know that hat wanted me to put it on, and I wanted the same. But I restrained myself and stood a chair on top of that hatbox to stop it sneaking out, and ran downstairs. Because it had come to me, you see, that maybe Munkulus and Grindle had those things hid in their rooms too, and I wanted to warn ’em …

‘But I was too late. Halfway downstairs I met the whole crowd coming up, and a look at their faces was enough to tell me the hats had ’em. Once you put one of those things on, you’re gone; you’re just a body, no better than an automaton, ready to jump to whatever order Titfer gives!’

‘How horrible!’

‘Horrible’s right. I couldn’t see any way of fighting them
all, not without someone getting harmed. And then I guessed where they were going, and I thought I’d best get there first, and rescue you and Art and your mum. Well, I was too late to stop them getting Art and Mrs Mumby, but at least I’ve got you …’

Then he smiled at me, that warm, dazzling smile, both shy and bold, which once made me feel so … well, I shall not say how it made me feel. For a moment I was almost inclined to forgive him, until I remembered how he had wronged me. Then I tilted my chin as haughtily as I was able, and turned away, and said very icily, ‘What do you propose that we do now?’

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Jack. ‘I smelled chloroform up there, so at least they must have taken them alive. My guess is that they’ll have carried them into the boiler room.’

‘Perhaps if we wait until morning you might be able to creep down there unobserved and rescue them?’ I reasoned.

Jack shook his head. ‘Dangerous. Titfer did for Ulla and Sir Richard, by the sound of it. He’s more than a match for us.’

I was relieved to hear him say it. I am far too weak and feminine to take part in daring rescue missions. ‘We must fetch help!’ I declared. ‘I gather that a train is due to arrive
in the morning. Perhaps if we conceal ourselves upon it we might return to Modesty and there alert the authorities. I realise that it would mean travelling without a valid ticket, but I am sure that in these calamitous circumstances …’

Jack grinned, as if unaccountably amused by what I had said. ‘Sneak aboard a train, eh? You’re thinking like a pirate, Myrtle!’

‘I certainly hope I am not!’ I retorted.

‘Shhhh!’ said Jack. ‘What was that?’

I listened, but heard nothing except the canvas covers of the Punch & Judy show rustling. It seemed closer than it had been before.

Jack looked round. ‘Myrtle,’ he cried. ‘Run!’

‘A lady
never
runs.’

‘Then walk d—— quickly! I reckon that tent is one of Titfer’s sentinels, bent on our capture or destruction!’

And as he spoke, the flap at the top of the booth furled itself up; a horrid crocodile puppet fixed us with its glassy eyes, and two long, many-jointed metal arms reached out to snatch at us with clacking, scissory hands!

I am afraid I did run then, and may have screamed a little too. Despite my recent coldness towards Jack, I was glad that he was beside me as I hastened along the gravel paths
towards Starcross Halt. But we had not gone far when something moved ahead of us, and we saw another of those vulgar booths wheeling itself towards us, preparing to cut us off!

We turned towards the hotel, and there was a third, this one not a Punch & Judy show but the automated fortune-telling machine which Art and Mother had consulted earlier, its open front revealing that mannequin of a sinister gypsy woman with one all-seeing eye. As her booth creaked towards us on its spindly wheels, she rocked back and forth and a cackling voice issued from her, saying, ‘
I foretell danger!
’

‘This way,’ cried Jack, turning us in yet another direction, but there beyond a stand of ornamental cacti a fourth of those eldritch shapes loomed up. It was a mechanised speak-your-weight machine, rolling towards us on rattling casters. I tried to evade it, but I was encumbered by my
dress in its calico bag and before I could turn aside it had lunged out with a silvery arm and dragged me on to its platform.

‘
Eight stone and two ounces
,’ it announced.

Jack punched it in the middle of its dial and pulled me free as it fell backwards.

‘What an unspeakable lie!’ I cried. ‘I have never weighed above seven stone and five ounces!’

‘Maybe it’s the great sack you’re lugging with you that confused it,’ said Jack, hurrying me past the fallen machine and up a rocky, sandy hill behind the hotel. ‘Why don’t you let it go?’