The Forever Engine Read Online Free PDF

spooked.
    Up a broad flight of polished wood stairs, down a hall, and finally to a pair of sliding doors. Gordon knocked, the doors slid open a crack for a moment, he exchanged a few hushed words with whoever was inside, and then the doors slid open to let us in.
    “You two wait out here,” he ordered the Bobbies. “And you mind yourself in here, Fargo. I have a revolver.”
    He patted his right coat pocket to let me know he meant business.
    We entered what I guess they called a sitting room. Four men conversed in the center of the room, and they turned to look me over without warmth. All wore dark suits except for one in an army uniform—same red tunic and dark blue trousers as Gordon but heavier with gold braid. Gordon joined them after gesturing for me to wait by the door.
    One of the older men smiled and shook Gordon’s hand, and Gordon returned the smile. First time I’d seen him show any warmth at all.
    This was supposed to be my interrogation, and I was here, but nothing was happening, so I figured we were waiting for someone else to show up. I glanced around the room. There were a couple love seats and wingback chairs set away from the walls but leaving a large open area in the center of the room covered by a single oriental rug. By the standards of the rest of the place, or what I’d seen of it, this room was sparsely furnished.
    The double-paneled door we came through was behind me, and drapes on the opposite wall covered two windows, so that must be an exterior wall. As I faced the exterior wall, I had a fireplace to my left and then another double-paneled door on the wall to my right, so two ways in and out if you didn’t count the windows. Good to know if I had to make a break for it. I wasn’t sure where I’d run to, but I had a very bad feeling about this place.
    Under the odor of cigar smoke, the room was filled with that same unfamiliar chemical scent I’d noticed at the hospital, and it seemed to be coming from the windows. Was that a room deodorizer of some kind? Maybe. It reminded me a little of Listerine.
    “What’s that smell?” I asked, and the gang of five turned to me with startled expressions, as if a statue or caged animal had suddenly spoken.
    “I beg your pardon?” one of them asked after a moment.
    “That chemical odor. I smelled it at the hospital and now here, but I don’t recognize it. I think it’s coming from the drapes.”
    They exchanged looks—confused, unbelieving, impatient.
    “Carbolic acid,” the tall officer snapped, and the five went back to their conversation, but the three men in suits stole glances back at me.
    Carbolic acid was an early disinfectant. I’d probably have recognized its odor from high school chemistry class, except I took biology and physics instead.
    The paneled doors to my right slid open and another man strode purposely toward us, his eyes taking in the conversational group and then locking on me. He wore his big shock of reddish-brown hair, graying at the temples, like a well-groomed lion’s mane. His dark suit looked expensive, carefully tailored.
    “Colonel Rossbank, gentlemen. So this is the fellow. What do we know of him?”
    His voice filled the room without straining—a voice accustomed to filling rooms.
    “Good day, Sir Edward,” the tall officer, presumably Colonel Rossbank, answered. “Aside from his preposterous story, I’m afraid we know nothing. The Americans profess ignorance, of course.”
    “Of course,” Sir Edward answered. He stopped a couple feet away facing me, hands clasped behind his back under the tails of his coat, and he leaned forward and squinted at me as if I were some sort of museum display.
    “ Quo usque tandem abutere, Catalina, patientia nostra?” I asked him.
    The five others shifted with surprise and muttered to each other, but Sir Edward barked a short laugh.
    “Damn me if I wasn’t about to ask you almost the same thing. ‘How long, Cataline, will you abuse our patience?’” he translated.