May 22, 1883
Bardonecchia Rail Terminus
Italy
On board the train, Turner glanced up from where he had been forced to sit, as Nemo stormed into the car. “Where is Rajiv?”
“Captain Nemo, wait,” Lettie called from the door. It was the only name she could remember to call him.
“You’re Nemo? My God, I’ve read about you.” Turner kept staring, almost uncontrollably. Nemo’s face … his hands … the demeanor … everything. Turner shook off a frightening notion he’d seen the man before, and the confusion of not remembering where that had been.
Nemo stopped, knife still in his hand.
Turner looked at it, then up at the Mariner. “Ah, there’s no need for that.” Then he nodded toward the doorway. “Doctor Gantry, I think you shouldn’t be here?”
Nemo swallowed, glared back at the astonished lady, and then turned back to Turner. His face was deepening with a rush of blood, but the woman was there and he couldn’t do what he wanted. “Where is the Professor?”
“Professor Pierce?” Turner watched Nemo’s face tighten. That made no sense: why would a man made famous by a work of fiction be interested in an inventor his employer just happened to have … Turner must have had a stunned look on his face.
“Where is he?” Nemo’s grasp on the knife whitened his knuckles and his unblinking eyes indicated a man just angry enough to use it.
Turner had to think fast. He glanced up to the left, thought for a moment, then replied, “I wasn’t told exactly where Pierce is being kept, only where to go once I’d obtained Doctor Gantry. No threats will get you information I don’t have.” A lie.
Wickham stepped forward. “Mr. Turner. We, none of us, are interested in games. Where were you talking Miss Gantry?”
“Holland. I’m supposed to take her up to the Port of Rotterdam, to a hotel there.” Turner glanced up toward the ceiling for a second. “Anyway, I was to wait there in Doctor Gantry’s lovely company until provided new instructions. My guess was that the plan for us was to go by sea to just about anywhere, but I wouldn’t know that until we checked in at Rotterdam. I doubt my employer was planning to come there himself.” He had to protect Robur.
Lettie waited for a moment, to see what else might be said. “He’s lying.” All eyes turned toward her. Her hands were no longer shaking and her voice was very flat. Now, she was in her element. “I am not perfect in my every analysis, God knows, but I remain a good observer of people’s behavior. And he is lying. Or he has been given a lie to tell and is aware that it is a lie.” When all were waiting on her to explain, she lifted her chin. “It’s an understood fact that when one is remembering a truth, their eyes often look right. However, when one is imagining or making something up, the eyes go left. No one really knows why, but it remains a proven statistic. You looked to the left, Mr. Turner. Not at anyone or anything, just to the left.”
Well, wasn’t that a twist? He’d have to be more careful around her. And he’d have to remember that little statistic, it could prove useful. “The little lady is brighter than all the learned men around her. Rather what I expected. I hope you’ll take that as a compliment, ma’am. It was intended as one. I don’t know what he has in mind, but that was what I was told to tell you.”
“Why wouldn’t he tell you what he planned,” she asked.
This time Wickham’s hands clenched into fists, but the rest of him remained cool and calm. “Because of this very circumstance: in case his American employee couldn’t handle one little woman.” These games would cost precious time. Too much time. He shook his right hand to loosen it and used it to check his watch. A comforting habit.
Lettie bit the inside of her lip at being called a little woman. For an odd moment, she felt sympathy with Turner, for she was quite certain that Turner had not taken the insult well. But her assessment of Turner was that he could be far more devious than Wickham. She noted that Turner maintained a neutral expression.
“Will your employer trade you for my nephew?”
The look of shock on Turner’s face said far more than he would have liked. “Nephew?”
Nemo continued, “Will your employer trade you for the … the Professor?”
Turner barked out a laugh. “No.”
“Then why keep you alive?” Nemo spat out at him.
“Maybe because there’s a lady in the room?”
Lettie thought for a moment then whispered to Wickham. “He said he was taking me to Holland. Lying or not, perhaps we should start there.”
Wickham nodded reluctantly. “I’ll get you on board the next train for Paris. The sooner you are ensconced in a safe hotel …”
“No, sir, you will not! You’ve involved me too far in this mess. The decision is no longer yours to make, it is mine. I have been used throughout and I intend upon seeing it to the end. That employer of Mr. Turner is holding my colleague hostage and possibly forcing him to work on an invention of mine … if he is to be at all believed regarding the Professor.”
“I am, this time.” Turner added, having listened in.
“And I would imagine that if I am not present in Holland, his employer, who is no doubt watching for us, will suspect danger and not show himself. One need not be an expert in kidnappings to know that the same applies to Mr. Turner. He must be there, as must I.”
Nemo tensed. “I will not use a woman as a decoy.”
Wickham attempted to cool his temper. “But I will, if Miss Gantry is cooperative. For the Professor’s sake, I assume you will?”
“How kind of you to ask this time. Yes,” Lettie said before really thinking through what she’d agreed to. She didn’t want to think about it too much for fear of panic. “Perhaps this is easier resolved than you think.” Before Wickham could comment, she turned to Nemo, speaking to the Mariner with a gentle reverence. “Sir, I believe cold logic will serve each of us best in this situation. Would you allow me to talk to Mr. Turner?”
Wickham tensed and dearly wished to lash out at her with either a cutting phrase or a bruising blow from the back of his hand. How dare she dismiss his presence? He forced his way back into the conversation. “I’ll consider that,” he replied before Nemo could answer. He didn’t sound as though he expected to decide in her favor. “Captain, Miss Gantry, I wish to speak to you both, if you please, outside.” He turned to Nemo, waiting to see if the Mariner was willing to acquiesce to his request. “Sir, if you please.” It was disgusting to have to kowtow to the old Wog but necessary. Machine. Be a machine, he reminded himself. Machines do not react emotionally, and following that line of logic, they do not make mistakes. No, he would not allow either that uppity Bitch or the old “Wog” to hold sway over him through his useless emotions. His face began to drain of the flushed color.
Nemo backed away from Turner, deliberately staring at him until he was close to the door. If this caused Turner any distress, he did not show it. In fact, despite the circumstances, Turner appeared amused.
Outside the train car, Wickham offered a hand reflexively to Lettie as she climbed down the steps, which she did not accept, sweeping past him and raking his ankles with her skirt hem.
Nemo was in the process of reining in his anger when she walked up to him. She desperately wanted to rest her hand on his shoulder as a gesture of kindness, but he was so far above her station in life - or too far beneath it - she wasn’t sure. Prince or Sailor, Madman or Murderer, she wasn’t certain which persona he preferred, or if perhaps he was uncomfortable with all of them. Her mind raced through the pages of the Verne biography, hoping to remember what she’d read. “Sir, is Rajiv Pierce really your nephew?”
“Yes. He is my nephew. He, and his cousin, and his mother … all gone, or so I thought until I learned of him through his lectures and through Pierre Hetzel. Now I know that he was taken from my family, not dead.”
“I have made the acquaintance of Sir Richard Pierce and, by his reputation alone, I know that he would never steal a child from his family. He shared with me some of Rajiv’s history. He had no idea that Rajiv’s family existed anymore. I can say that Sir Richard has been very kind to him, very loving. In fact, he was greatly distressed over the Professor’s disappearance.”
Stifling a laugh, the Mariner shook his head. “If Rajiv had not been taken from me, my little prince would be dead like his mother and - my own son. That is the logical truth. No, I do not blame the man for saving a child. Despite my usual opinions regarding the English to the contrary, I think I admire him for such an act of compassion. It is rare in humanity.”
Wickham actually wasn’t happy to intrude, but intrude he did. “Miss Gantry, do you think Turner will tell you what he will not tell either of us,” he said, indicating Nemo, who was still holding the knife.
“Doctor Gantry,” she corrected him. If they were going to work together then he would need to recognize her twelve years of brutally hard academic work and social upending. “And yes. He will tell me the same truths and lies that he’s planning to tell you. But he may give away information, by reactions or even outright admissions, that he will feel he can get away with - with a woman.” She waited to see what Wickham was thinking. His face gave away nothing. “I am a fairly good observer; let me do what I do best. Let me observe Mr. Turner. Even knowing that little statistic about looking left or right, one cannot help themselves or entirely prevent it. That is only one way I can read most people.” She narrowed her eyes at Wickham and let the remark stir whatever concern it might in Wickham.
He continued to hide his feelings.
A machine.