Alien Stars: A Harry Stubbs Adventure Page 4

  Skinner took a long, slow drink, watching her all the while, making no move to pay. “Never heard of her?” he said, putting his glass down. He felt in his pocket and took out the envelope. “Never heard of her?”

  She just had time to read the address and recognise her own writing before he replaced it in his pocket.

  “Nobody else knows about you and her,” he said. “It’s just between us for now. All we want is some information.”

  “Talk to her, then.”

  “Mabel is nowhere to be found,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Just fancy that.”

  “I don’t know nothing.”

  “That’s good. Knowing nothing is very good. Saves you a lot of trouble, knowing nothing.” He took another slow drink.

  The barmaid, Elsie, looked on, waiting for him to continue. That envelope clearly bothered her.

  “We’re not going to make any trouble, I assure you,” Skinner went on, putting a shilling on the bar. “We’re going to drink up and leave quietly. If, that is, you say the magic word that’ll make us disappear and never come back.”

  “What word?”

  “A word about a beetle.”

  “I don’t know nothing about a beetle.”

  “A minute ago you didn’t know anything about Mabel Brown,” Skinner reminded her. “Maybe we’ll wait another minute.”

  “I’ve never even seen it. Why don’t you leave me alone?”

  Skinner nodded again as though she had told him something interesting. “Why is it so valuable?”

  “That letter is private correspondence. Give it me.” She held out her hand.

  “If you tell me what makes the beetle so valuable.”

  “I don’t know anything about it. It’s not a proper beetle anyway. It’s Greek thing.”

  “So perhaps you can tell us something…” he coaxed.

  Elsie stepped back and rang the bell over the bar, the one they ring for last orders. The whole pub fell silent.

  “Free drinks to everyone who helps throw these two bastards out,” Elsie announced in a loud voice, pointing at the two of us in case there should be any doubt as to who she meant.

  The scene was like one of those famous cartoons by H. M. Bateman—“The Man Who Lit His Cigar Before the Loyal Toast” or “The Shareholder Who Dared To Criticise The Chairman’s Report.” In those cartoons, the whole room goggled with various degrees of comically exaggerated horror and outrage at the man in the middle who had committed some terrible social gaffe all unawares.

  At that second, with all the attention focused on me, I knew exactly how it felt to be one of Bateman’s socially inept men. Elsie was the pub’s darling, and we had offended her. I could not have caused more upset if I had gone round and spat into every pint of beer individually.

  The difference between us and an H. M. Bateman cartoon was that we had not just made a social gaffe that would result in uproar and hurt feelings. These men were as hard as any in South London, and defending the honour of their Elsie would require inflicting physical pain.

  It seemed to me then that the pub rose as one man. In most situations where a fight was in prospect, my brain would start working in double-quick time, but for one moment, it just jammed up, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the opposition.

  I was paralysed, but Skinner had already seen and planned and sprung into action. “Get ‘em, Harry,” he said, skimming his cap like a discus. It flew at tabletop height, upsetting glasses so the owners stepped back. The tactic might win two seconds or so. If we had been near the exit with a clear way out, it might have helped, but a solid wall of outraged workmen blocked our way to the door.

  Someone grabbed my right arm, and reflexes took over. I gave him a quick jab to the floating ribs with my left, and he doubled over. A second man approached, and I hit him high in the chest with a blow that was more of a shove. He was upright, not crouched, and the impulse of the blow so far above his centre of gravity sent him toppling backwards.

  I had a clear advantage in height, being a good head taller than any of them and with a correspondingly greater reach. If they could get close enough to wrestle me, it would be over. However strong you were, you couldn’t win when there was a man holding each of your arms and others are hitting and kicking you. But nobody could wrestle me without passing my fists.

  I was seized from behind. Rather than trying to break free, I jerked my right arm back smartly. I judged the height pretty accurately, and my elbow connected solidly enough with a face. As my assailant let go, I whipped round and followed up with two quick-fire jabs.

  The men were pushing forward, shoving the tables and benches aside to get at me, and I delivered some long punches. Hitting a man bare-knuckled called for judgment. It helped if you had the reach and could avoid striking the hard bones of the jaw and breaking your fingers. When I hit the first man, his dentures flew out and onto the floor, an occurrence that might have made me laugh in other circumstances.

  Beside me was a flurry of movement; Skinner broke free of two men trying to hold him and vaulted cleanly over the bar. He shoved the surprised Elsie aside and went through the doorway. Then I was busy knocking them back, manoeuvring as best I could with my back to the bar.

  I was surrounded by a semicircle of perhaps twelve of them, two deep. My assailants were getting up almost as fast as I was knocking them down, but it was all one-sided. None of them had managed to land a blow, and the assault slowed. Their initial enthusiasm had been quenched, and the mob was hesitating. Those who had been knocked down were not keen for another dose of the same.

  They seemed to have lost all individuality, and every one of them had the same face, compounded of sullen rage and bloodlust. I thought they were going to rush me in a body, and I struggled to think how I might defend myself when they did. Instead, one of them shouted out:

  “Belts!”

  Belting was a time-honoured means of punishment round those parts. It was usually doled out to gang members who failed to toe the line, or to other transgressors. The victim had to shield his face from flying belt buckles and had no chance of getting back at his tormentors. It usually ended with him on the floor getting a kicking until they decided he’d had enough.

  The first belt whipped at me, moving slow enough for me to dodge it. I stooped and grabbed a stool as another cracked painfully over my shoulder. Then there was such a volley of belt buckles whipping at me that all I could do was try to defend myself with the stool and, with my free hand, grab any belt I could catch hold of and haul on it to disarm an attacker or pull him over.

  That was quite a game. It was a fairer game than it seemed, though. The coordination between my attackers was poor, and if they were strong, they were not all sober, and at least one of them kept tangling the others when he missed, hitting them in the face. With a bit of sidling left and right and judicious ducking, I reduced the rate at which the blows landed, but all I could do was play for time.

  A piercing whistle cut through the tumult—the double blast of a police whistle, deafening in the close confines of the pub.

  My attackers froze, some of them dropping their belts in an attempt to look less guilty. Past them, Skinner beckoned me from the pub doorway, the silver whistle between his lips.

  I did not need any encouragement. It was now or never, and I charged forward, clobbering two men aside with the stool, fending off belts left and right, and shoulder barging the only man directly in my way. I was out of the door in four bounding paces. Then I was running up the street with Skinner beside me.

  We broke records for the hundred-yard dash going up the street. I could hear footsteps behind us and I was convinced the pack would catch up, but between the narrowness of the doorway and the fact that they had to hold their trousers up, we had the edge in speed.

  We hurtled back up to the entrance to the New Town, where two policemen were looking down towards us, their attention no doubt attracted by the sound of the whistle—and by the mob appearing behind us. They let us throug
h then closed the iron gates behind us and shot the bolt with a clang. The footsteps behind faltered and died away in moments.

  “What’s all this, then?” demanded the constable.

  “Slight misunderstanding. In the Knyght’s Head,” said Skinner, out of breath. “Caused offence. No harm done.”

  The constable looked us up and down, giving us time to feel uncomfortable. “Public brawling. Causing a disturbance. A charge of affray might be brought, in fact, there being two of you involved. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

  “I’m very sorry for the disturbance, and I assure you nothing was further from my intention. It was, as I say, a very unfortunate misunderstanding involving a lady.”

  “I see,” said the constable, reaching ponderously for his notebook and pencil and turning to me. “Stubbs the boxer, isn’t it? Been using your famous fists tonight, have you? Are you supposed to be Skinner’s bodyguard?”

  “I acted exclusively in self-defence when we were set upon by a mob in consequence of my associate’s conversation being taken amiss by a young lady, Officer.”

  The constable permitted himself a small smile. “At the Knyght’s Head? That was no lady, Stubbs—that was Elsie Granger! As pretty a she-devil as you’ll find this side of the river. What did you want with her?”

  “We were visiting in a professional capacity,” said Skinner. “Unfortunately, our enquiries were not welcome.” Then he leaned closer and said something in a voice too low for me to catch.

  “I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” said the constable, replacing his notebook. “You two won’t be allowed through this gate again. There’s enough trouble in New Town without you stirring people up. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Skinner.

  The constable tapped his nose. “Keep it clean, Skinner. You too, Stubbs. We’ll be keeping an eye on you. Off with you, now.”

  Chapter Four: Counting the Stars

  Fish and chips were a great restorative, and Skinner insisted in paying for what he called “land and sea” for the two of us. He made a point of demanding an extra-large battered cod for me, a thing that I never did for myself. I didn’t mind paying for an extra saveloy to make up the protein. Skinner ordered it served with the newspaper wrapping open so we could pick at our food as we walked down the street.

  “Sharpens the old appetite, doesn’t it?” he said cheerfully through a mouthful of fried potatoes.

  “I thought we were dead there.”

  “I never felt so alive in my life,” he said. “Danger is a better relish than brown sauce. Besides, they wouldn’t do any worse to you than break a rib or three.”

  “Have you ever had a broken rib? It’s not pleasant.” I munched a morsel of cod. The batter was crispy and sharp with the tang of vinegar, and the flesh was soft and succulent. Skinner was right; imminent death did sharpen a person’s pleasure in the good things in life.

  “Strange, alien creatures, women. She was playing along nicely when she just snapped,” mused Skinner, looking into the evening sky. “Impossible to understand ‘em.”

  I could hardly comment on that, but something was still puzzling me. “It’s not a proper beetle. It’s a Greek thing,” I said, repeating Elsie’s words. “What does that mean?”

  “Greek to me,” said Skinner, chuckling at his own wit.

  “What did you say to the constable?”

  “I dropped the name of our employer. Sometimes it works.”

  Our employment has always been veiled in ambiguities. On the one hand, it was suggested that we had some sort of sanctioned, semiofficial status, but everything had to be kept a secret. Skinner said it was like being spies but in our own country. He had no curiosity about the matter. It was enough for him that we were paid well.

  We chatted idly as we ate until Skinner looked up at the big clock outside the Foresters’ Hall and said we needed to be on our way. “Just agree with everything he says. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut, and you won’t go far wrong.”

  Skinner led me along Central Hill to Norwood Park, which normally offered a majestic view of the City of London to the north, with the dome of St Paul’s and all the church spires visible on a clear day. The view was not so impressive with dusk falling and the stars beginning to peep out. Away from the streetlights, the shadows deepened into full darkness—not like country darkness or the dark of a coal cellar, but the city kind of dark, where shapes were outlined against an ever-present background glow.

  “Hey there, you two.” A tall, stout figure waved his cane at us. “Over here.”

  “Good evening, sir,” said Skinner.

  “A fine evening, Skinner, Stubbs.” He was looking up into the sky. “Just as I hoped, the stars are out. Come this way. I want to explain some things to you.”

  Even in the dark, Skinner’s look said I told you so as clear as day.

  A good officer never needed to explain. He’d give orders, his men would obey, and the whole thing would function like clockwork. But some officers felt a need to explain the whys and the wherefores and were not happy unless you agreed with them. It betrayed a lack of confidence and bred a lack of belief. The men laughed at them and walked all over them.

  The only thing worse was an officer who wanted to be your friend.

  Stafford led us into shadows, where the slope was steeper, and surprised me by lying down on his back and indicating for us to do likewise. “Now, look up. Give your eyes a minute to adjust, and you’ll see more stars. Do you see them?”

  “Yes, indeed I do, sir,” said Skinner. “Is that the Plough over there?”

  “Ursa Major. Indeed it is. Stubbs, do you see the stars? Do you know how many stars there are?”

  “Yes, sir. No, sir, I can’t say that I do.”

  “Well, keep looking.”

  We lay there in the quiet and the dark for a minute, and sure enough, I could see more stars than before, the fainter ones appearing out of the velvet night between the brighter stars.

  “On a good night in a properly dark place, you can see far more than this.” Stafford was almost apologetic; this was something that mattered to him. “Ptolemy made the first star catalogue in the second century AD, with more than a thousand stars in it. Flamsteed listed more than two thousand—of course, they were using telescopes by then. When I was at college, my professor told me there were fifty thousand stars. Since the turn of century, though, with these new telescopes, we can resolve much fainter stars, and now we talk in millions. Millions of stars… can you imagine that?”

  I scanned from horizon to horizon and tried to think what a million stars would look like. Even that many would not quite fill the heavens, but they would look like the sparkles on a sunny sea, all packed close together.

  “But then,” he said, “along came Professor Hubble, who has just discovered the universe!”

  “Pardon me, sir?” said Skinner.

  “Edwin Hubble. An American but a remarkable astronomer. They have the most astonishing telescope in California, a hundred incher. And with it, Hubble discovered that the Andromeda Nebula, among others, was not part of the Milky Way.”

  “Did they think it was?” asked Skinner.

  “We thought everything was part of the Milky Way,” Stafford said. “But Hubble showed that it was a separate galaxy in its own right. And that there were many, many others like it.”

  “So what we thought was the whole universe was only a small part of it,” I said once the silence had stretched on.

  “Exactly so. Now you have to consider just how vast the universe is that Hubble discovered.”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Skinner, failing to sound amazed but adding “sir.”

  “Let me put it in terms that you can more easily understand. Suppose you had always lived in a closet six feet by three, and that was your world.”

  “A closet, sir?” asked Skinner.

  “Six feet by three,” Stafford repeated. “And as far as you knew, that was the total extent of Britain. Then one d
ay, the door was opened, and you were let out into a mansion with halls and corridors and chambers, a thousand times more space than you had ever known. That was Ptolemy, and the ancients who realised that there were many worlds. You know the story about Alexander the Great sitting down and weeping because there were now more worlds to conquer?”

  “I’ve heard that,” I said.

  “It’s a canard, a lie. When Anaxarchus told him that there were many worlds, Alexander wept because he had failed to even conquer one. It’s in Plutarch.”

  “Quite so, sir,” said Skinner.

  “But that was the ancients. What Hubble has done is like opening wide the doors of the mansion so you can see beyond. All around you is the vast metropolis with many more houses bigger than the one that you’ve seen. And beyond that, the rolling fields of the Home Counties, the cities of the Midlands, the Lake District, the vast expanse of the Yorkshire Moors, on and on to the Highlands of Scotland and then endless islands, and the smallest of the islands is infinitely bigger than what you took for Britain. It staggers the imagination.”

  “It’s a dizzying prospect,” I agreed, having given up the contemplation of it early on.

  “There are other countries besides Britain,” said Skinner.

  “Exactly,” said Stafford. “Hubble has expanded the bounds of the universe to an almost unthinkable degree. But who is to say that’s the end of it? With every era, we find a bigger and bigger universe. Even if you ever did finish exploring the British Isles, you would then find an even greater world beyond.”

  “I see exactly what you mean, sir. The universe certainly is very big,” said Skinner.

  “Big enough to contain marvels and wonders,” said Stafford. “And we are arrogant enough to believe that this little speck of dirt, this little broom closet we live in, is the pinnacle of creation?”

  Neither Skinner nor I felt equal to a reply. Fortunately, none was expected.

  The stars did look quite lovely; I had never taken time to look at them before, twinkling away up there. Most of them were plain blue-white, but others were yellowish, and one winked almost scarlet like a blood ruby. And just as Stafford had said, as my eyes adjusted, I could see more and more of them. Some of the fainter ones looked smeared out—galaxies or nebulae perhaps, archipelagos of millions of stars.