Enigmatic Pilot_ A Tall Tale Too True - Kris Saknussemm [28]
It was a close night and a full moon shone down on the river, so the captain had the boiler fired. Lloyd had been encouraged out of the family’s cabin to allow his parents some time alone, a practice he was growing more and more curious about. Only the thump of the paddle blades stirred the quiet, so that the occasional sounds of a baying dog or the crashing of a caving bank reached the deck, where he found the gambler smoking a cigar, staring down at the wake.
“You wonder about it, don’t you, boy?” St. Ives asked, and tapped a bright ash into the water. “How I came by the hand—and how I came to lose my own.”
“I do,” Lloyd agreed. “There’s no hiding there’s a story behind it.”
“Well put, lad,” the gambler said, nodding. “And well spoken. Like a gentleman. I will reward your discretion. After all, we’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Partners,” Lloyd responded.
“Indeed. Gentlemanly put again. Well. Some people would say I asked to have this done to me.”
“You asked for it?”
“I said some people would say that,” the gambler answered, and his face went glassy, as if he were now looking at something long ago. Then some hatred surged up within him, like a dead log that had been submerged in the river.
“Ten years ago, I used to be the secretary to a very rich man in the East. He valued my memory and my head for calculations. He was a fellow of extreme cleverness and cruelty—Junius Rutherford, or so he called himself then, but that was not his real name, I am sure. Owner of the Behemoth Formulary and Gun Works in Delaware. For himself he made the hand—and others like it. Said he’d lost his own in a foreign war—or with the Injuns or in a sword fight. His stories changed with his audience.”
“So do yours,” Lloyd pointed out.
“W-ell … yes …” stammered St. Ives. “A man must be flexible, given the unkindness of fate. But I am inclined to think that he was the cause of his own misfortune. He had the marking of an acid burn on his face as well. My belief is that one of his experiments backfired on him. He was always fiddling with new combinations of chemicals—schemes for weaponry. And other things. Weirder things. ‘Better to be the head of a louse than the tail of a lion’ was his motto, and if ever there were a fellow to plant the head of one creature upon another he was the one. His estate was like nothing you can imagine.”
“How so?” Lloyd asked, certain that he could imagine much more than St. Ives.
“He called it the Villa of the Mysteries, and the name was apt. There were lightning rods all about, and he had hung up effigies around the grounds to keep the meddlesome townsfolk from spying. That and his dogs, a breed I had never seen before and hope never to see again. Gruesome beasts.”
“Go on,” Lloyd said.
“Well … I know this will sound like flapdoodle, but he carried a seashell around with him. Like a polished black conch. He listened to it—as people sometimes do with shells, thinking they can hear the sea. But he did it often and, stranger still, he spoke into his.”
“What did he say?” Lloyd asked. “Who was he talking to?”
“I wish I knew.” St. Ives sighed. “He spoke in a language I could never understand. To whom, I have no idea. I assumed he was touched in the head. And I had good reason to think so. The estate had an artificial lake, and on the water he had a fleet of automatic model ships that reenacted the British defeat of the Spanish Armada. And there was a greenhouse full of orchids that looked like they were made of glass, but they were alive and grew. God’s truth. He loved books and fine things, but most of all he prized unexplainable things.”
“How do you mean, unexplainable?” Lloyd asked. There were not many things you could