"How so?" Barnett asked.
Forbis frowned in concentration, his right hand grasping the air for the right word. "Let me describe it," he said. "Chardino is locked into the restraint — whatever it happens to be — usually by a committee of spectators. Through his conversation with the committee and the audience he has established the difficulty of what he is about to attempt and won the sympathy of his audience. Then his daughter covers him, and whatever he may be locked into, with a large drop cloth. There is now a period of waiting. The daughter, after standing expectantly for a minute, commences to pace nervously, obviously worried. There is a muted conversation about 'air supply' or some-thing else possibly relevant. The audience are on the edge of their seats. Then it happens! Sometimes he appears from under the cloth; sometimes she whisks the cloth aside and he has disappeared completely. Sometimes she raises the cloth up to cover herself also, and then it drops and Chardino has taken his daughter's place, and it is she now locked inside the restraint. Once a society of undertakers in some provincial town brought along a coffin, and they took him to a local plot of land and buried him in it. After a while, when nothing happened, they dug the coffin up and opened it to find him gone. He beat them back to the theater."
"Why does he call himself the Invisible Man?" Barnett asked.
"Chardino specializes in getting in and out of impossible places— often without being seen."
Barnett made another entry in his notebook. "What sort of places?"
"Well, let me see." Forbis referred to his card. "He was locked in the tower room of Waldbeck Castle and escaped while two companies of guardsmen were surrounding the building. They saw nothing. Another time he was locked in the vault of Bombeck Fréres, in Paris, and was found to be gone the next morning when the time lock permitted the manager to open the door. The man is a great showman."
Barnett nodded slowly. "I would very much like to meet Professor Chardino," he said. "He sounds like just the sort of person I have been looking for."
"Fascinating to talk to," Forbis agreed. He flipped over a few more cards. "Then there's the Amazing Doctor Prist — the World's Leading Escapist. It sort of rhymes, you see."
"He escapes from places also?"
"Oh, yes. Not as good as Chardino perhaps, but very showy, with a great many flourishes. He's been trying to arrange an escape from the Tower of London for the past five years, but the authorities won't let him. Naturally he plays that for all it's worth. By now he's gotten almost as much publicity out of the fact that the authorities refuse to allow the escape as he would have from successfully accomplishing it."
Barnett wrote the name Prist down in his notebook. "Any others?" he asked.
"Well, if it's escapes you're particularly interested in, there's Walla and Bisby," Forbis said, pulling out another card. "You can see them at the Orion right now, as it happens. Their specialty is walking through a brick wall, which is constructed right on stage in full view of the audience."
Barnett sighed. "I can see that I'll need more detail about all of these people, if I'm to do my job right," he said. "I hate to impose on you like this. Have you some free time? Perhaps we could discuss this over a drink at the Croyden?"
Forbis grabbed for his hat. "Delighted," he said.
TWENTY-FOUR — INTERLUDE: THE EVENING
A Londoner can always be summed up by his clubs.
— Arthur William a Beckett
The purifying rain fell steadily, gently, caressingly, the drumming sound it made on the wet paving stones drowning out the casual noises of the surrounding city. He stood on the pavement on the corner of Montague Street and Upper Keating Place, awaiting his prey, his great cape wrapped around him against the rain. Not that he minded the rain; the cleansing rain, the obscuring rain, the protecting rain, the rain that washed away blood, that cleansed the hands, if not the mind. The rain that renewed everything in its wake, but could not bring forgetfulness. Memory was pain, but nepenthe would bring death, for he had nothing to keep him alive but memory. His actions now were the continuing result of the memories that went beyond pain and the mission that went beyond life. He was the wind.
He had been content for all the days since — since — the thoughts whirled as his conscious mind rejected the thought thrown up by his unconscious. That frightful image must, at any cost, be suppressed. That thing had not happened. Could not have happened. A red haze of grief and pain passed before his eyes, and then all was clear once more. He had been content, for all the timeless days that had passed since he had become the wind, to follow the same mindless progression. The details had fully occupied his conscious mind, had mercifully filled his thoughts, as he accomplished the deaths, one by one, of Those Who Must Die. He had always been very careful about details, even in his other life that had once been so important and was now so meaningless. Except that it had given him the skills he needed for his new tasks.
Like a man caught on the rim of a great wheel, fated to follow the same endless ellipse turn after turn, with only the scenery changing, he had traced, followed, located, entered, searched, killed, and silently departed.
This work, for a while, had so filled his conscious mind that further thought was unnecessary, and the attempt difficult. This cycle had served temporarily to suppress the pain, briefly dull the gnawing anguish that filled the well of his soul. But of late it had not been enough. The process was becoming too automatic, too easy; although he still took scrupulous care with each event, it no longer filled the whole of his conscious mind. Now the pain remained. The anguish grew.
Now the nameless gods that drove him demanded that he go further. He must risk himself, and yet win out. They must all die. He must track them to their lair and destroy them all. He must enter hell itself, in the guise of the devil, and terminate this corruption and all its foul, flagitious spawn.
A four-wheeler clattered and splashed down Montague Street and pulled to a stop in front of the house he watched. The jarvey jumped down from his seat and knocked on the front door. In a few seconds it opened a crack, and then closed again, and the jarvey resumed his soggy seat. Two minutes later a well-bundled-up gentleman left the house and secreted himself inside the cab, which promptly pulled away.
Lovely, lovely, thought the man who had become the wind. The horse won't be in any hurry tonight. And the jarvey won't be peering about and getting rain in his face. He retrieved a rubber-tired bicycle from the fence paling and set off through the rain in leisurely pursuit of the gentleman in the four-wheeler.
For the first twenty minutes the growler traveled vaguely northward through the empty streets, with the bicycle pedaling discreetly behind. Past Regent's Park and Marylebone to Camden Town the four-wheeler rumbled; and then it turned east and passed the Cattle Market and Pentonville Prison. In a few minutes it had entered an area of London with which the bicyclist was entirely unfamiliar. He looked about him as he pedaled with the simple pleasure of a child surveying a new playground. Ten minutes later, on a quiet residential street with well-separated houses, the four-wheeler clopped to a halt. The bicyclist stopped a respectable distance behind and pulled his machine out of sight behind a convenient hedge.
The passenger pushed open the carriage door and, after peering out and sourly observing the still-falling rain, gingerly climbed down, pulling up his collar and wrapping his overcoat closely around him for protection. He looked about him uncertainly, as though not quite sure what to do next. Then, signaling the jarvey to remain where he was, the man walked slowly down the street, peering at the houses on both sides as though trying to make out details of their gaslit interiors through the rain-fogged windows. Halfway down the block he found the one he wanted. By what sign he identified it, the watcher was too far away to determine. The man turned and waved the four-wheeler away, and then scurried down the short path to the doorway.