Then the eternal assassin relaxes.
The treachery had been unexpected. He’d been taken unawares. But luckily the projectile pistol used against him caused a lingering death. Time enough for an induced transmigration of souls, the assassin’s ultimate, and most perfectly crafted weapon. Sicarius smiles. He’ll enjoy being Erason.
At least for a while.
PRISONER OF TIME, by John Russell Fearn
CHAPTER ONE: AVENGING ENTROPY
The game of bridge had been a long one — and for one member of the company at least a boring one. But now it was over. Two men stood in the cool of the summer evening thankful for escape from the warmth of the lounge. They smoked silently and disregarded each other until one of them spoke.
“Been a long evening,” Reggie Denby said, rather haltingly. “Cards bore me — bridge especially so. Too much demand on the mind.”
“Yes,” the other said, noncommittally.
“Been worth it, though,” Reggie added. “I’d sit through a thousand hands of bridge just to be near Lucy. S’pose you would, too?”
“One has to make concessions, even for Lucy.”
Silence again and more smoking. The house at the back of the two men was not a big one but it was ablaze with light and the sound of voices. Nor was the garden in which they stood large. It was just one of those well-kept suburban patches shielded from the vulgar gaze by a high wooden fence upon which sprawled rambler roses.
The situation that existed now for the two men was not unique. They were waiting for Lucy Grantham to come out and reveal upon which of them she had decided. For months now each young man had ardently pressed his suit — Reggie Denby with the fervor of genuine love, and Bryce Fairfield, with the laconic brevity of a scientist. Bryce believed in himself and his capabilities as an electronic scientist: Reggie, having no such brilliance and existing merely as a none-too-bright salesman made up for the deficiency by being generous-natured towards everybody. Two men utterly apart in ideals and outlook, yet both centered on one young woman.
Then presently, Lucy Grantham came hurrying out to them. She was slim, in the early twenties, chestnut-haired and starry-eyed, at that time of her life when any young man would have been willing to confer his eternal devotion upon her.
“Sorry boys to put you through it with that bridge game,” she apologized, laughing, as she came up. “But you know what dad is! Insists that bridge is the way to make friends.”
“Or enemies,” Bryce Fairfield murmured.
Lucy fell silent, studying each man in the reflected light from the house. There was Reggie — chubby, fair-haired, genial to the point of idiocy, his blue eyes fixed adoringly upon her; and then there was Bryce Fairfield, lean-jawed, sunken-eyed, with untidy hair sprawling across his broad forehead. He was unusually tall and always stooped. His flinty gray eyes analyzed everything upon which he gazed — even Lucy. Very rarely did he smile and certainly his associates had never heard him laugh.
“This, I suppose, is the hour of decision?” Lucy asked solemnly, fastening her hands behind her like a mischievous schoolgirl.
“If you wish to make it sound melodramatic, yes,” Bryce agreed. “Frankly, m’dear, I don’t see the reason for all these preliminaries — to say nothing of an evening wasted playing that damnable bridge. I could have spent my time to much more advantage down at the physics laboratory.”
“Oh, you and your chemistry — or whatever it is!” Lucy made a gesture. “You keep your nose too close to the grindstone, Bryce. Anyway, you both asked for a definite answer, didn’t you?”
“It didn’t have to be a personal one,” Bryce replied. “The mails are still functioning.”
Lucy looked astonished. “Bryce, do you actually mean that my answer is of so little consequence it could have been sent through the post?”
“Your answer,” Bryce responded, “means everything in the world to me, Lucy — but you know the kind of man I am. I cannot bear to waste time — playing bridge for instance.”
“Not even if it keeps you near me?”
Bryce was silent, his big, powerful mouth oddly twisted. Then the girl moved her gaze from him across to Reggie. “Reggie.…”
“Yes, Lucy?” He moved with alacrity. “Anything I can do for you?”
“I’ll have plenty of time to tell you that later.” Lucy hesitated as Reggie absorbed the significance of what she was saying; then she turned to Bryce. “Bryce, you do understand, don’t you?” she asked earnestly. “I think, now I’ve come to ponder it over, that there never was anybody else but Reggie.”
“From your attitude at times I hardly formed the same opinion,” Bryce answered. “However, you’ve made the matter perfectly clear. You prefer Reggie— Very well then. I am not the kind of man to argue over a fact. No scientist ever does. All I can do is offer my sincere congratulations to both of you.”
He caught at Lucy’s hand and shook it firmly, so much so that she nearly winced. Then Reggie grinned dazedly as he found his own arm being pumped up and down vigorously.
“You — you know, I can’t half believe it, Bryce! I never thought I stood a chance. You’re so different to me — the masterful type. I thought that would impress Lucy quite a lot.”
“To every girl her choice,” Bryce said, shrugging; then in a suddenly more genial tone: “I hope this is not going to interfere with our friendship, Lucy? I’d like to keep in touch, chiefly because I know so few women who’ll take the trouble to be interested in me.”
“Why, of course!” Lucy laughed and patted his thin, muscular arms. “You’ll always be welcome, Bryce — always. What kind of a girl do you think I am?”
Bryce did not answer that. Instead he looked at her in a way she could not quite understand, his relentless gray eyes probing her. Vaguely she wondered what he was trying to analyze about her. He made no comment, however, and presently relaxed.
“Well, it’s been an interesting evening, even if a disappointing one for me,” he commented. “I don’t see much point in staying any longer, Lucy. I’ll go home I think and drown my sorrows in drink!”
“In physics more likely,” Lucy smiled. “By tomorrow, Bryce, you’ll have forgotten all about asking me to marry you. You’re that kind of a fellow.”
“Mebbe,” he said, musing — but Lucy would probably have thought differently had she seen his expression when he arrived at his bachelor flat towards eleven that night. It was hard, the mouth drawn down at the corners, a light of vindictive cunning in the rapier eyes.
Without giving any heed to the necessity for sleep Bryce threw off his jacket, slipped on a dressing gown, and then made himself some coffee. Fifteen minutes after arriving in his flat he was in a deep armchair, black coffee at his side, and a stack of books within easy reach. Each book was an abstruse scientific treatise, but each treatise made sense to a mind like Bryce Fairfield’s. His genius in matters scientific was far beyond the average. He would not have been staff-supervisor for the Electronics Bureau had it not been.
Chiefly, to judge from the notes he made and the books he studied, his interest seemed to lie in entropy and its effects. Not to any man did he breathe a word of his private investigations into science’s more mystical realms. To the staff at the Bureau — and also to Lucy and Reggie on those occasions when he joined them for an evening — he was still just taciturn Bryce Fairfield, making the best of having lost the girl he wanted.