“Come on, Waldo,” Isaac whispered as I bent down to blow out the candles on the birthday cake. “Big puff. For Kit’s sake.”
Thirteen candles stood on the cake, thirteen wisps of flame. One for each year of Kit Salter’s life.
“Not so fast,” a voice boomed in my ear. I felt Kit’s Aunt Hilda tugging at my shirt. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“What are you—”
“Stand down.” She elbowed me aside, her face full of dogged determination. “Kit would have wanted a girl to do this.”
“You’re hardly a girl …” Rachel blurted, then stopped, reddening.
Hilda glared at her. “A woman, at any rate. Besides, I’m family.”
I moved out of the way. Only a madman would try to stop Hilda Salter when she was in full flow. She stood in the boarding-house parlor, glowering at that harmless cake as if it was the enemy. There was no obvious reason for her anger. A beautiful creation, the Madeira sponge rose in white tiers with a marzipan figure of Kit Salter on top. Aunt Hilda leaned over and, with a single puff from her bulldog lungs, the candles went out.
I felt sorry, somehow, to see them vanish so fast.
We were celebrating Kit’s thirteenth birthday party in our boarding house in San Francisco. Everything was perfect. The presents, the silver vats of punch, the mountains of scones and buns. Everything was just fine, but never had a birthday party felt so much like a funeral. Kit sat by the fire in her bath chair, a blanket over her knees. It was sunny outside, the buds bursting from the California orange trees and the birds in full song. Yet the doctor had ordered that Kit must have fire and blankets at all times.
It was all wrong. You know how Kit is, blazing with energy, jabbering non-stop. Now she just lay in bed night and day, her face empty. She needed a nurse to wash and feed her. Her eyes stared at nothing and she moved not an inch. We could have been pouring out our congratulations to a china doll.
Kit had been in a coma for over six months, since we’d left China. She had not said one word—which, I’m sure you’re aware, is highly unusual—not so much as a blink or a stir or a sneeze. Our adventures, which had taken us from the deserts of Egypt to the frozen peaks of the Himalayas, had been cruelly cut short.
So why bother having a party for her? you may well ask. In part it was to cheer us up. Rachel and her brother, Isaac; her aunt, Hilda Salter; and I, Waldo Bell, had all spent six months in hell. We were on tenterhooks, hoping every morning that this would be the day. This would be the special day Kit would sit up and surprise us all by ordering breakfast.
It hadn’t happened, not so far.
But there was another more important reason why we were holding the birthday tea.
The doctor on the ship back from China had told me to treat Kit as if she understood what we were saying. “Just talk,” he’d said. “You never know what might go in.” So I sat and rambled on. I poured secrets out to her, which I would never have told the waking Kit. Other times, I didn’t quite know where my thoughts ended and my words began.
Sometimes I would get angry with Kit for being so damned obstinate and with myself for letting her take stupid, unnecessary risks in China. The risks that had landed her in a coma.
But I’m becoming gloomy. This was a happy day, Kit’s birthday, a time to smile and put on a brave face. No use dwelling on these wasted months in San Francisco, trudging from doctor to doctor, seeking anyone who could cure Kit. We had even gone to witch doctors and spiritualists, to the craziest healers out there.
Not one made a jot of difference.
No wonder. This coma, which had struck her down in China when she had held the bones of a long-dead saint, was beyond the understanding of science.
“Before we cut the cake, let’s all have a sing-song,” Rachel suggested, going to the piano. “Kit loves music.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Kit’s aunt said. “She couldn’t hold a tune to save her life.”
“It doesn’t do to speak ill of the—” Rachel stopped mid-sentence.
“Out with it, Rebecca! DEAD. D.E.A.D. My niece is not dead. She is merely asleep and any day now she WILL wake up. I, Hilda Salter, demand it.”
“I didn’t mean ‘dead.’” Rachel was flustered, her brown hair falling all over her face. “I didn’t mean ‘dead.’” Her voice was rising hysterically.
Isaac, meanwhile, was sitting in an armchair next to the comatose Kit. I don’t think he heard a word, for his gaze was fixed on the cake. He hadn’t done anything but gaze hungrily at that cake since he’d entered the room.
“Let’s have some cake,” he suggested. “Kit prefers cake to music.”
“Good idea,” Hilda grunted. Picking up the silver slicer, she cut herself a generous wodge and tucked in. “Well, Rebecca, I dare say I’ve tasted worse,” she said to Rachel, who had spent hours slaving over that cake. “I’m beginning to see what you’re for.”
Just then there came a knock at the parlor door. In came Bessie the maid.
“There’s a gentleman outside, asking for you, madam,” she said to Aunt Hilda.
“Show him in. I suppose we have enough cake to go round,” Aunt Hilda ordered.
I was going to protest, because it seemed rude to Kit to spoil her party, but Bessie had disappeared. In a few minutes the oddest-looking gentleman in San Francisco stood in our parlor. He was obviously English, for he was dressed in a good-quality top hat and frock coat that had come from one of London’s better tailors. He had ruddy cheeks, long wispy hair that stuck out below his hat and a bulbous pink nose that showed him to be a serious drinker. His eyes darted around the parlor as if valuing the contents.
I took an instant dislike to the man—he gave off the odor of some cheap huckster. I was willing to bet he was all set to try to sell us something.
“Well, get on with it, man,” Aunt Hilda snapped. “You’re interrupting a private party.”
“I beg leave to present my credentials,” he said, offering a thick cream envelope to Aunt Hilda.
Aunt Hilda opened the envelope and drew out a piece of paper. I sidled over to her and read:
“Are you Dr. Silas?” Hilda asked him.
“No, madam. I’m Harold Rumbelow, his humble servant.”
“How on earth do you know my niece is unwell? I take it that’s why you’re here.”
The man made a sweeping bow so low his nose nearly touched his heaving belly.
“We have heard it on the grapevine, your ladyship.”
“I have not been ennobled—yet,” Aunt Hilda said stiffly. “Anyway, what grapevine?”
“Your niece’s plight, as you visited every reputable doctor—and, I beg your pardon, scandalous quack—has come to my master’s attention. He acts from the purest motives, naturally.”
The man cut a seedy figure. He did not inspire trust. But we were at our wits’ end. We had to help Kit; anything was better than nothing.
Aunt Hilda scanned the letter: “How does this so-called galvanic electro-shake contraption work?” she asked.
“The mysteries of electricity,” replied the man, bowing again. “I do not understand it myself, but my master … Well, ladies and gents, I do not boast when I tell you that he has, literally, worked miracles.”
Isaac watched him thoughtfully. “They’ve had some remarkable results with electricity,” he said. “Thinking it over, I can see that a good shock might be just what the nervous system needs to stimulate it into renewed activity.”
“Eh?” I asked, looking at him in puzzlement.
“It may work. Waldo, Hilda, I think we should give it a try.”
Rachel bit her lip and said, in a trembling little voice, “I agree with my brother. I mean, what have we to lose?”
Aunt Hilda turned to the fellow and said, “Thank your master for coming to our aid, my good man. We may well consult him. But we cannot take such a giant step till Professor Salter, my brother, has arrived. You may take a piece of cake as you leave.”
He was being dismissed, but the man stood there looking obstinate.
“Madam, pardon me saying this, but I think you should come tomorrow. My master said time is of the essence.”
Aunt Hilda flushed deep red. “How dare you? If we seek to consult you, we will do it when we see fit. Now, off you go. Go on. Goodbye.”
There was nothing more the man could say. Bowing again and casting a mournful look at the cake, he backed out of the door. He never did get his slice.
“That was strange,” I said, looking after him.
“Strange? How so?” Isaac asked.
“I mean that he should come and visit us and be in quite such a hurry that Kit has treatment with his master. It seems rather suspicious to me.”
“This is a small city. I am something of a legend in these parts,” Aunt Hilda said, dismissing my concerns with a wave of her podgy hands. “Tomorrow you will look for my dratted brother again. I am keen to start on this treatment as soon as possible.”
She might have waved away my fears, but something still struck me as odd about that little red-nosed man.