Troubles - James Gordon Farrell [145]
“Where’s Edward?”
“Still in the ballroom. But you’d better not go in.”
“Don’t worry. It was probably just an accident. I’ll go and have a talk with him.”
In the ballroom it was still light enough, thanks to the glass dome of the roof, for the Major to see Edward sitting at his table in the middle of the floor. He was scribbling rapidly on the top sheet of a thick stack of paper; a number of curl-ing pages lay beside him, already written on. As the Major watched, he came to the end of a page, threw it aside without waiting for the ink to dry and immediately started on another, the nib of his pen making a faint rasping sound, barely audible against the dull, steady roar of the rain drumming on the glass roof.
The Major took a few steps forward. Scattered on the parquet floor around Edward’s table were a number of pinging jam-jars, two or three of which were already brimming. But more jam-jars were needed. Here and there shining puddles had already formed.
“Edward.” The Major advanced with caution. “What’s all this I hear about you firing a shotgun at Murphy?”
“Eh? Oh, it’s you, Brendan. Watch out where you’re walking. There’s a drop of rain coming in. Wait, I’ll get some light.” He crossed to the grand piano and came back with some candlesticks which he arranged in a battery around his writing-table. He struck a match, touching off one candle after another until his desk shone like a lighthouse in the gathering gloom.
“It was just an experiment. Are they making a fuss?”
“They are a bit. You can’t really blame them, you know.”
“They’ll get over it. As far as Murphy’s concerned it had to be a shock, mind you. There was no other way of doing it. But I gave him a couple of quid, so I don’t suppose he has any complaints. He’ll be as right as rain in an hour or two.”
Edward seemed calm and pleased with himself. The candlelight, however, throwing the lines and wrinkles of his face into sharp relief, gave him a haggard, insane look.
“It’s never been done before. Never actually measured, that is...so, of course, as far as science is concerned it hasn’t strictly speaking existed until now. Plenty of subjective reports, but they won’t wash for your scientist. If you want my opinion, Brendan, nobody has ever dared to do it before. In Cannon’s book The Wisdom of the Body he mentions a person who was captured by Chinese bandits and thought he was going to be shot. His mouth went dry, of course, but he didn’t bother to find out how dry...He was a scientist too, I gather. Still, I suppose it’s understandable.”
“You mean you threatened to shoot Murphy.”
“He believed me too. Went as white as a sheet. For a moment I was afraid he was going to pass out, which would have ruined the whole thing. I had to keep him talking for a while so that he could get a grip on himself...but not too much of a grip. Told him the first thing that came into m’head... that his service had been unsatisfactory and so forth, and that he had to be dealt with. Then I pulled both triggers. It made one hell of a noise...even scared me. I’d taken the shot out, of course, so it was only the caps going off. Even so, it brought down a cloud of plaster from the ceiling...” He gestured to a corner of the room where the Major perceived what looked like a snowdrift glimmering in the shadows. “The place needs doing up a bit.” He cleared his throat and got to his feet as a drop of rain from a new leak in the roof hurtled into the area of light and drummed on the white stomach of the frog lying beside the ink-well. Picking up one of the jam-jars from the floor, he edged the frog aside with it, then sat down again.
“Anyway, I dropped the gun and got him to spit out