by Tom Hourie
“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.’