He’d have to take a chance. The day was young. He could get a tube direct to Tooting.
He got back two hours later, under his arm a brown paper parcel that smelled strongly of carbolic. His nose wrinkled as he unwrapped it. The suit, a brown one, was in good condition, but it would need fumigating. He took it out and hung it on the line in the yard. He left the door open, the neighborhood being what it was.
He came back and stropped a razor blade round the inside of a glass. His hands were still shaking after the drinks of the day before, but he achieved a decent shave. He donned the shirt and tie and went out to retrieve the suit.
Other predators had been. He glared upward. “Bloody pigeons.” He used a rag to clean the jacket sleeve. The carbolic odor had faded but, in doing so, had unmasked a strong underlying odor of mothballs. He cursed again, but put the trousers on. He had shrunk somewhat since he had bought this suit, he thought ruefully, running his hand round inside the waistband. But it wouldn’t show too much under his jacket.
He was less pleased when he looked in the mirror to comb his hair. How long had it been since he had last seen Maggie? Fifteen years? Must be. Soon after her husband had died. Fifteen. That meant that she couldn’t be much over fifty. Wealthy, smart. He had seen a picture of her in the papers only a year or two ago.
And he looked an old wreck.
He threw on a dingy mac and went to the chemist down the road.
He went in and made his request to the girl in the pink nylon overall behind the counter. She hid her mouth behind her hand before she asked, “What color, sir? Auburn, blonde, black?”
Which had it been? More of a cross between mouse and ginger, if he remembered.
“Chestnut?” the girl suggested.
“That’ll do,” he said.
“Five and six, sir. Be careful not to get it in your eyes when you apply it.”
“D’you think it’s for me?” He snatched it from her, flung coins on the counter and went back to his basement, quivering with indignation.
There he followed instructions and sat reading an ancient copy of the Times Engineering Review until it was dry. Then he went back to look at the result in the cracked mirror above the sink.
Fool! His eyebrows stared starkly white. He splashed some of the dye on a rag and rubbed hard. That was better. They could dry en route. But the hair looked too dry. Like bloody rusty wire.
He found some Vaseline which he rubbed in. Then he combed and brushed it, whistling “When You and I Were Seventeen” between the gaps in his teeth. Subliminally prompted, he rummaged in the trunk, found a denture, rinsed it, and smacked it in his jaws. It was a bit loose, like the trousers, but it filled the gaps and plumped out his lean cheeks.
On with the coat, and it was done. He craned in the tiny mirror to get as much of the effect as possible, and was hugely pleased. But the smell of mothballs bothered him. He found a bottle of aftershave lotion that Alan bought him one Christmas and sprinkled it liberally over his garments.
“Now, fight it out,” he said blithely.
He passed out of the peeling door into the light of day. A series of ads from pre-war days came suddenly to his mind. For bath salts, hadn’t it been? “Into the bathroom Aunt Aggie. Out comes Miss Agatha Anstruther, M.A., L.R.C.M. Lecturer in the Pianoforte.” “In goes has-been Quy,” he murmured to himself as he proceeded down the alleyway, “Out steps Adolphe Quy, Esquire, M.B.E., Mover of the World,” and did not notice the figure that brushed by him, until a bottle of milk clattered on the stones behind him.
He turned. It was Norman.
“Strewth!” said Norman. “It is you!”
“Who else? I trust that I did not occasion your small mishap?”
“Don’t you worry, Mr. Quy. A very small price to pay.”
At the station, Quy stopped to buy a carnation, and then a cigar at the kiosk. He rarely smoked, but Maggie always liked the smell of a cigar. And it suited his ebullient mood. On a sudden thought, he went into a callbox and consulted a directory. Maggie was still at the same address. He came out and hailed. a taxi with lordly gesture.
“Three two five Clargies Street, Mayfair,” he told the driver.
It was only when the taxi wheeled to deposit him outside the small discreet apartment building, that he felt his confidence ebb. Maggie would be out. She was a career woman, after all. It had all been for nothing.
His legs felt shaky as they ascended the steps, and worse as he stood in the lift that took him to the top floor. He got out and lingered in the thick-carpeted hall to light the cigar. Now he found himself praying that she would be away. “Ach, Quy,” he told himself, “You’re acting like a love-sick schoolboy,” and he rang the doorbell.
A pretty, foreign-looking maid answered the door.
“Lady Wentworth?”
“Who is calling, please?”
“Mr. Adolphe Quy.”
“Just a moment, sir.”
She retreated behind a chastely carved door on the other side of the hall. But it was Lady Wentworth herself who came out.
“Ado! How good to see you! Where have you been all these years?” She embraced him warmly.
“Hello, Maggie. You’re looking fine.”
She had never been of model slimness, and now she couldn’t have been called anything but plump, despite the sleek silk dress and the doubtless expert foundation beneath it. But she was maturely handsome, one grey streak in her blonde hair.
“Come in.” She showed him into a room that brought back memories to him. It hadn’t changed that he could recollect. Then, with furniture like this, there could have been no need. Chippendale and antique carpets didn’t need renewing every ten years. She ushered him to an armchair, and turned away. “Sophie, bring in the whisky.”
She turned back to Quy.
“Mm-mm, you look pretty good yourself.” Her nose had detected mothballs, but Ado had always had a faint aura of them about him when he was dressed up. And his hair. Memory might fade, like a snapshot, but not as quickly as that. Or reality faded quicker. He had already been greying when she had last seen him. He had probably forgotten that. How old was he, the old lamb? Getting on for seventy, surely.
“Thank you, Maggie. Things could have been worse. How about you?”
“You only have to read the financial pages. Then, they were never your favorite reading, were they?” She sighed. “The struggles are all over now—have been for years. Poor old Andrew, he did all the donkey work.”
“Modest as ever!” Quy said chidingly “You know he wouldn’t have got anywhere without you. He knew what he was doing.”
“What, when he picked me out of the office?”
“He had a few of the good years.”
“All too few. And now—” She sighed again. “A company becomes a self-perpetuating machine. The danger of shipwreck gets more and more remote as the direction gets into more and more experienced hands. It spreads the chances. Of course, when a fair-sized company does hit the rocks, it hits ’em. Sometimes I think that the slim chance of that happening is all that keeps me from selling up and going to live in the Bahamas or somewhere. Still, that would be the most likely thing to upset the steering. It’s still my money—or Andrew’s—that’s the core of the business. But I sometimes kid myself the few odd times I put a word in, that that word helps.”
“You wouldn’t want to start all over again, would you?”
She fingered her glass reflectively, then looked up with a faint smile. “No, I suppose not. It would be like having to start to walk again. And I got enough bumps the first time. Still, let’s not get maudlin. What have you been doing, Ado? Still inventing, still pushing back the frontiers?”
“Trying to. Nothing very notable, I’m afraid. Until—until now.”
“Now?” Her voice was suddenly cautious.
“I’ve made the strike, Maggie, at last. The great discovery. I’m out on my own this time, too—I think.”
“I’m so pleased, Ado. What is it?”
>
“Anti-gravity.”
She looked sad. “Oh—picking yourself up by your own bootstraps?”
“That’s what it amounts, to, Maggie. I know what you’re thinking. It’s in the category of perpetual motion machines and eternal youth serums. But they’re man’s dreams. Dreams can come true.”
“I’m disappointed in you, Ado.”
“Why? For thinking I can conquer gravity? But I—”
“No,” her voice was suddenly hard. “For taking me for an old—”
“Maggie!” The word was coarse. It sounded horribly so on her lips.
“All right,” she flared. “I didn’t forget plain language when Andrew got his knighthood and I became Lady W. You’ve come here to try and take me for a few hundred. At least, don’t insult my intelligence. I may have been bright only on the financial side of Wentworth Engineering, but I picked up quite a bit of technical know-how on the way.”
Quy’s hand holding his whisky glass trembled violently. Then the glass fell and his head was bent in his hands, his shoulders shaking.
“Ado. Oh, Ado.” Then she was suddenly hardheaded again. “Look up, man. Look at me.”
He lifted his head for a moment, then it slumped again. And there was no doubt about it. She had seen a man cry before, but Adolphe Quy was the last man she could have pictured.
“Sophie.” The maid came running. “Bring Mr. Quy another glass.”
She filled it nearly full and knelt down beside him.
“There, there, love. Drink this.” She took his arm and it felt terribly skinny. Should she offer him lunch, she wondered. The poor old bastard probably hadn’t eaten for days.
Quy waved his arm feebly. He lifted his head.
“Not just now. Sorry about that.” He sat up. “I did come here for money. But don’t doubt my word. I wouldn’t lie to you, Maggie. I didn’t last time. I did have an idea for a revolutionary new engine. I just didn’t know that somebody else was developing the linear induction motor too.”
“I know,” she said gently. “You sent me the cutting.”
He was reviving, but his voice was heavy with regrets. “We were going to call it the Maggie Wentworth, weren’t we? I didn’t know whether it was going to be a car or a train.” He gulped. “I only got as far as a little trolley on wheels, Maggie, but it worked. And then I picked up a paper with the news that somebody had beaten me to it. I didn’t want to come back like this. I’m not broke, Maggie. Not quite, anyway. I’ve been a bloody sight harder-up most of the time these past years than I am now. All right, I came here to put the finger on you. But for something, Maggie. For something.”
“But for what? Why didn’t you say what it is? Why try and sell me a gold brick?”
“I didn’t. I’m not. It’s what I said it was—antigravity. It’s not a gold brick—except a real one. Look, won’t you please believe me? I may be getting on a bit. Maybe I broke down. That’s one of the complaints of age, like prostate trouble. Thank Gawd I don’t suffer much from either of them. And I’m not going off my chump. I’ve never been sane enough to go crazy.” He sniffed. “And, thank you, I will have that scotch.”
She handed it to him. “And have another cigar. Yours seems to have expired in the ashtray.”
“No, not the cigar. Not now. I don’t really like them all that much. I only smoked it because you like a man to. The same as these clothes and all.” He took a gulp of the scotch. “But I didn’t put them on just to—I mean, I would have tried to make myself look as good as I could, coming to see you. If I hadn’t wanted anything. I would have come to see you before, only after the last time—”
He broke off, and took another drink.
“Listen, Maggie. I won’t go into a lot of technical detail. It’s not engineering of your kind. Not like the linear motor. Do you know what a superconductor is?”
“Yes.”
“You know what the Meissner Effect is?”
She shook her head.
“Well, it’s simply the fact that a superconductor in action is impervious to a magnetic field. I was working for a company, until a few weeks ago, trying to develop an organic molecule that would behave like a superconductor at ordinary temperatures instead of only at near absolute zero. And I found one, only this non-metallic superconductor generated its own kind of Meissner Effect—it was impervious, not just to magnetism but to gravity.”
“That seems to make sense. But you say you were working for a firm, Surely anybody could see the possibilities in this, if you could show it to them working? Why isn’t the firm backing you?”
He coughed. “We-ell, there was a little matter of nobody being around when it happened. And I couldn’t duplicate it because the blasted test strip just took off. Taking half the works with it.”
“Wait a minute. Not Hypertronics?”
He nodded.
“Oh, no! I might have guessed. I was in Athens at the time. I read about it in the airmail Telegraph. I knew the name because they had supplied us with a few things from time to time. Well, I can understand why they won’t finance you.”
“You do? Do you know Maddox, their boss?”
“Maddox? Never met the man. But his company went into liquidation yesterday.”
“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
She laughed, but it was half a sigh. “No, you’re not, you thumping old hypocrite! All you care about is your own ideas.”
“We-ell, I have to say I am. Sorry, I mean. Don’t I? Actually, I’m a bit relieved. I wondered why I hadn’t heard from them. They did talk of slapping an action on me for a million, besides charging me with false pretenses. Which could have been a nuisance.”
“Why—were there false pretenses?”
“Honest to God, Maggie, no. I may have sold a bit strong to them. But caveat emptor. And I have made a fortune for them—if only with the superconductor.”
“What’s the good of a superconductor that you can’t hold down?”
“I don’t think the Quy Effect—that’s what my grandson Alan christened it—shows itself until you pump a certain voltage through it. But I’m not interested in holding it down. I want to get it off the ground.”
She shook her head. “Ah, the Maggie Wentworth rides again, is that it? Or should it be flies? Or floats?”
“It will, Maggie. This time it will!” He stopped short, gnawing his lip. “But it’s not just a matter of a few hundred pounds. This is a pretty expensive molecule to up.”
“Could my firm help in the actual cooking?”
“Afraid not, Maggie. It’s a different line of country from anything your people could handle. The prototype will take a bit of engineering, but elementary stuff that I can handle myself. It’s the molecule that will take the money. Or a few million of them in one little piece.”
“All right. Out with it.”
“Ten thousand.”
“Ouch.” She looked at him for a long time. He returned her gaze, trying to look every inch the dedicated and responsible pioneer. In fact, she thought as she looked him, he looked like an apologetic child.
Then she sighed and went across to a Chinese Chippendale bureau. She came back with a checkbook and wrote quickly.
“Oh’ make it cash, will you?” he asked anxiously. “I’ve still got a few creditors lurking about. They could make a hole in that if I put it in a bank and they got wind of it.”
Nine
He was sitting in a glass room suspended over Regent Street, facing a scholarly-looking young man across a desk that shone dully bronze.
“I’ve brought the specification.” He took out a long envelope and passed it across the desk.
The other opened it, scanned it for a time, then looked up.
“This is pretty complex, Mr. Quy, even for Biotechnics. I’m not sure that your suggested sum of ten thousand pounds will cover it.”
“I don’t see why not,” Quy riposted. He had never bothered himself overmuch with the figures at Hypertronics, but he had a pretty shrewd idea of
the cost. It was difficult, of course, to dissociate the cost of the preliminary work, the failures, from that of the one successful sample. The former had been by far the larger, but each successive sample had, with increased expertise, been easier to make. Each had involved only a slight shift—an atom or two—from the previous one. He himself had picked up some knowledge of the techniques. Which made it infuriating that he couldn’t go back to the firm who had done the work then. But his surmise had been only too correct. A phone call had shown him to be as persona non grata there as he had been at his late employers.
“We’ve prepared a contract, in any case,” the other went on. “I have it here. You’ll see that we do not undertake to deliver an actual specimen, as long as we supply you with costed proof of work done.”
“And who does the costing?”
“We will. I’m afraid you’ll have to take our word for it. It works both ways; the contract provides for a refund if the specimen should be achieved at a price below the figure.”
“Your costing again, I suppose.”
The young man began to show slight signs of wearing patience. “It’s a standard contract for this kind of work.”
Old Quy squinted at him. “How about if I come in on the job myself?”
“I’m sorry,” the young man said quickly. A trifle too quickly? Quy wondered. Things got around. Perhaps it been a mistake to use his own name, carried away by fact of having ten thousand quid behind him this time. “That wouldn’t be possible. Of course, if at any time you to make a progress check, I can almost certainly arrange for a visit to our laboratories.”
Quy glowered at him. It was difficult to make out the tone of these smooth characters who seemed to infest science these days. He sounded like a head waiter saying that he might be able to arrange a table. Did he expect some kind of a consideration too? He looked at the grey suit, the button-down collar, the button-down face above it, and decided to let that one go. There was a more disturbing point lurking in the words.
“At any time?” he barked. “Give me that contract.” He peered at it, then looked up. “Except for the dotted line the one for the signature, there’s not a space for a date on this thing.”
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