“So, I should keep my lawyers ready, then?” Purdue asked, even though he knew the answer.
“For now. Don’t leave town. We don’t need you to help them make you look suspicious, you know?” Campbell advised.
He left shortly afterwards. On his bare feet Purdue skipped across the smooth, mirror-clean floor of the lobby and vanished down the stairs to his laboratory again, locking the door behind him. With all the analytical data he had accumulated from his underground scientific colleagues he hoped that he would have sufficient knowledge to devise a chamber to attempt reversing time, pushing the envelope of even his abilities. He gathered up cylinders and a small, handheld capacitor with which he was going to store the charge he would need to apply.
Charles came down to the lab, announcing that a package had arrived from Sam containing a water sample. “Sir, Mr. Cleave is on Skype. He says it is imperative that you have him on the line while you open the sample.”
“Now?” Purdue gasped. “I don’t really have time for this.”
“He sounded terribly excited, sir. He said it was about ‘that way those people stay young’?” Charles frowned.
Purdue was confused. With his mind racing around having to escape British air space, curing Nina, keeping Campbell fooled, and the guilt of causing Nina’s malady, it was pretty difficult to keep his ducks in a row about a phrase between him and Sam. Then he recalled the e-mail with the pictures Sam had sent him, remarking about how young the locals seem to be for their ages.
“Oh, yes, of course,” he sang as it came back to him. “Yes, I would want to talk about that. I shall contact him shortly, but…” Purdue closed the door and turned to his butler. “Charles, I need you to go above and beyond.”
“Of course, sir. What do you need?” Charles asked with a nod, his rigid body practically standing at attention. Although his day had been horrible thus far and he direly wanted to take rest in his private life, the fact that his reputation with his boss had been redeemed had vastly improved his demeanor.
“I’m going to look for Nina,” he told Charles. “When I find her I’m going to get her out of the country, maybe take her to Sam until I have shaken this murder charge. At least there she’ll be safe.”
“If I may, sir,” Charles questioned the plan. “How do you plan to locate Dr. Gould while the scanner is still running, sir? And what do you need from me?”
Purdue smiled. He looked as exhausted as he was, but somewhere in his face the old cheerful genius had resurfaced, again having a zest for action. Charles could see that his master had regained his confidence and the butler was elated at the welcome change.
“The scanner located her several minutes before Campbell left, but I didn’t tell him. I know where she is,” he grinned happily. Then he stepped closer to his butler and laid a hand on the man’s shoulder, whispering, “What I need you to do, my good man, is to stall the police. They have to believe I’m still here, you see?”
Charles looked at Purdue with concern. “Sir, I don’t have to tell you that if they find out you left the country you will be in deep trouble.”
“You’re right, old boy,” Purdue said. “You don’t have to tell me.”
Charles just smiled, clearly, as always, willing to play along. “Very well, sir.”
With that Purdue let his butler out and returned to preparing the instruments he would need to try and help Nina reduce the effects of her illness until he could come up with a more permanent solution.
“Sam!” he exclaimed as Sam’s wayward looking image appeared on his monitor. Behind the journalist the skies looked gray and cold as the gusts messed up his dark, longish tresses.
“Aye, thanks for calling, Purdue,” Sam shouted over the speaker, hindered by the wailing wind. “Sorry about the connection, but the weather is wild here. Did you get the sample?”
“Just arrived,” Purdue said. “Shall I remove it now?”
“Aye, please do. I need you to analyze this liquid and what causes the colors in it,” Sam requested. “Around here that water impairs aging, if that is possible without, you know, a balanced diet and regular exercise.”
Purdue lifted the plain water bottle from the box with a dismissive smirk, “Perrier, Sam?”
“That’s just the bottle we scooped it in,” Sam replied. “Can you tell us what’s in it, because this bloke here,” Sam grabbed old Gunnar and pulled him into the frame with him for Purdue to see, “is…wait, guess how old he is.”
Purdue shrugged, trying not to offend, “Um, well, the reception here is not grand, but I’d say the man is in his early sixties?”
“Ha!” Sam exclaimed excitedly, giving Gunnar a high-five before letting the man go back to the fire where he was grilling fish. “Purdue, that bloke is eighty-five years old! Eighty-five!”
Purdue was amazed. He lifted the water bottle to the light, but it looked like average water. “I don’t understand. You mean, he drank this very water?”
“No, he bathed in it,” Sam beamed, “back in 1969! Look at him! This water practically, well, it seems to slow down time or something.”
“Sam, water cannot slow down time, just motion,” Purdue negated what he hoped was true.
“Do you me need to call Gunnar over here again? Did you see that? I even checked his I.D. He was born in 1930!” Sam smiled and glanced back at the people behind him before lowering his voice to the laptop. “And this is our secret, alright? This can never get out, alright Purdue?”
“It will not,” Purdue said seriously. He looked at the water and though it contained no colors as Sam had mentioned, he knew Sam’s word was ironclad. An idea formed in Purdue’s head that could solve a lot of problems for a lot of people. “Sam,” he said as he grabbed a pen and paper. “Where exactly are you?”
He did not care how furious Nina was with him or how she did not want to see him. There would be plenty of time to hate him once she was well enough.
Chapter 25
Mrs. Cotswald was as pleasant as she’d been back in the 1980s when she’d last tried to make Daniel Patterson an offer on St. Vincent’s. A private seller, she’d had no need of addressing Dean Patterson through estate agencies and high-end commission-hounds. Only her personal lawyer would manage the transfers and her accountant would facilitate the payment from her trust to the Ebner Family Trust of which Dean Patterson and his mother were beneficiaries.
The last time that she’d tried to buy the academy, then little more than a modest ruin with a few lecture halls and one hostel, her purchase had not been approved. Through many months of toiling between agents, attorneys, and third party buyers the Dean eventually elected to keep the property that had been passed down to his mother and himself.
There was never any reason given by his mother why she’d revoked his rights to make singular decisions on the sale of the premises, but he’d accepted it. He knew his mother as the sweetest and smartest businesswoman, therefore, if she took the reins he was okay with it. Little had been revealed about his wife or her life before they met.
Daniel had stayed out of her business out of respect. However, he quickly learned that his wife was as stubborn about her past as his mother had been. When he’d wanted her to help him find out who his mother’s birth parents were, she’d refused to ‘meddle in Prof. Ebner’s affairs,’ as she put it. Eventually Daniel had had to abandon the surprise he’d wanted to give his mother on her birthday. This time, he hoped that selling the property that had been taxing on his mother for all these decades would be a positive change, both for her and for him.