The Fountain of Youth

Chapter 22

“Mr. Purdue was furious, Charles. He spent how many days in his lab, talking to his science mates on the underground screens and I swear I could hear him crying at some point,” Lily whispered to the butler a few doors away from Purdue’s bedroom. “It’s the first time in over a day that he took to his bed, as you know. So I was wondering if I should even bother with lunch today. Do you think, maybe, what those bad people did to his brain is not gone for good? I mean, his own therapist tried to kill him. I’d be a bit batty if all that had happened to me, you know?”

“Lillian, I told you that Mr. Purdue can get eccentric at times, but he is hardly the type who allows his temper, if he had such a thing, to rule him. The man is also well-known as an insomniac, so please stop meddling,” the butler advised her.

No sooner did his words sound, than Purdue opened his bedroom door, looking flustered. “Why didn’t you wake me at the usual time, Charles?” he snapped as he passed the butler. Before Charles could explain, Purdue slammed the bathroom door and a loud click of the lock confirmed that he wanted to be left alone.

Lily scoffed, looking Charles straight in the eye. “If he had such a thing, hey?”

Gloating at her well-founded concern, she walked down the hallway of the mansion’s second story, heading for the kitchen. “I’ll slap a nice lunch together then.”

“How wonderful for you,” Charles sneered to himself. “You guessed right, once.”

Charles was immensely concerned for his master. He’d never seen Purdue like this before. The jovial billionaire had always seemed to have everything under control. A man who was impossible to offend or intimidate, there had to have been some immeasurable blow to his personal life for his emotions to lurch past cheer, charm, and aptitude. The butler gave it some thought, but he dared not snoop and he would never imagine asking what was wrong. It was simply not his place to do so.

Duty, however, did not deter sensitivity to his master’s demeanor. It bothered him that Purdue was behaving completely in opposition to who he really was. When Charles descended the stairs to the laboratories, he once again found the other labs vacant and locked. Purdue had dismissed all the staff members he did not need at the moment and had told them to take a week’s paid vacation. Charles knew that this meant that Purdue wanted to be alone.

His laboratory was a mess. Charles was reluctant to clean up, lest he disarrange something he did not recognize as important and that could cost him his appointment as head butler.

“Charles!” Purdue roared from the steamy frame of the bathroom he’d just emerged from.

“Yes, sir?” Charles jogged to get up the stairs to the ground floor lobby.

“Are you in my lab?” Purdue asked, his face contorted in irate seriousness.

“I was just checking if there was any tidying to do, sir,” Charles reported, but he could feel his adrenaline warn him that that was the wrong answer.

“Stay out of my laboratory,” Purdue barked. “Please! Everyone just stay out of my way. All of you. I’m pressed for time and everything I attempt in my quest to fix this…this…fuck-up…” he shouted, using a phrase that almost never escaped him, “has been a monumental failure. Now, if anyone is looking for me, tell them to sod off. I’m pressed for time.” Barely clothed properly, Purdue hastened back down to his lab to continue his relentless search to stop time. Walking briskly as he wiped his face and threw his towel over his shoulders, he mumbled, “No time. Time is running out. Have to stop time, for Nina. Nina, hold on, my dear.”

Charles joined Lily at the base of the second staircase from where she’d watched Purdue disappear under the floor. He looked at the cook and admitted, “You’re right. The master has gone batty indeed.”

The intercom sounded and Charles excused himself to attend to it. In his mind he was already practicing saying ‘sod off’ in the most respectful way a butler could. “Yes?” he said into the speaker, with his finger on the talk button. Security reported that a police homicide investigator named Campbell was there to see Purdue.

“Oh drat,” Charles mumbled.

“Excuse me, sir?” the man asked.

“Um, nothing, nothing. Let him come in,” he ordered. “Thank you.”

“Right away, sir.”

“Oh, you are just ticking off the boss all over the place today, aren’t you?” Lily remarked before she disappeared around the corner to hide in the kitchen.

At first Charles reckoned he could explain the circumstance to the investigator and give his boss what he wished. He opened the front door and changed his mind. The large, rugged man in the typical trench coat worn by noir detectives in old Hollywood flicks did not look like a reasonable man to be told off by a simple butler, that was for certain.

“Good morning. Afternoon. My name is Lieutenant Campbell. I’m from the Dundee office of Police, Scotland,” he said in a robust voice.

“Please come in, sir. Mr. Purdue is currently…” he glanced at the direction of the laboratory door, “indisposed for company.”

“That’s alright, my good man,” Lieutenant Campbell consoled strongly. “I’m not here for his company. Where is he?”

“Sir,” Charles tried to impede the police officer’s way to make him understand reason, but Campbell was not thus inclined. Impatiently, he kept advancing towards Charles as he set out the rules of the way it was going to be.

“Listen, Jeeves. I respectfully urge you to comply with my request or else I will have to arrest you for obstruction and throw you into a cell full of gentlemen you could not groom with a Hazmat suit and a horse brush, savvy?” Campbell hammered his words.

“Very well, sir,” Charles replied with a stone face, but inside he wished he had the will and the ability to deck the obnoxious intruder. He kept an eye on the untidy officer as his soles tapped along the descending stairs to Purdue’s lab. Taking a deep breath, Charles knocked three times. It wasn’t every day he was being shouted at from two sides by two authority figures. Now he just wanted to do his job and go home at 7 p.m. for a hefty brandy and a solid heed to forget the day’s bullying.

“What is it?” Purdue’s growl emanated through the shield of the door.

“Sir, Lieutenant Campbell is here from the Dundee police offices. He insists on speaking with you, sir,” Charles announced as the cop’s shadow fell upon him. Alarmed at the prohibited protocol, he was going to ask Campbell to wait upstairs, but Purdue had already opened the door. Charles was caught standing there between the two, awkwardly mute.

“Mr. Purdue,” Campbell nodded.

“Lieutenant Campbell,” Purdue acknowledged. “You have come far to see me, I presume?”

“Can I see you…in private?” the cop asked, looking hard at the poor butler who was unable to move from between the two men in the confines of the narrow passage.

“Step into my laboratory. We can talk here,” Purdue offered and ushered the cop inside. Realizing that the butler would have left them if he hadn’t been trapped, a bit of the old Purdue came out as he winked at Charles in amusement and whispered, “You’re welcome.”

Charles almost smiled as he walked away from the uncomfortable situation.

In Purdue’s lab, Lieutenant Campbell had time to look around as his host tidied up a stray chair for him to sit on. The place was packed with machines, lights, and monitors the likes of which the police officer had only ever seen at MI5 before. The billionaire smelled of fresh Aloe Vera shower gel, but his shirt was clammy from his still moist body and his white hair was unkempt and wet. Even his glasses seemed to sit a little skew on his face and he was barefoot.

“This place…uh,” Campbell started. “it looks like you’ve been busy since we last saw each other.”

“Yes, yes, I have. I’ve been busy with some very important experiments,” Purdue said hastily, as he rushed to create some order around the officer. He found two glasses and poured them both some fruit juice he kept in the bar fridge.

“That sounds like Frankenstein stuff. Experiments. Laboratories always gave me the creeps,” Campbell admitted as he took the drink from Purdue. “Thanks.”

“Oh, don’t worry. There’s nothing like that going on here. Just quantum physics and some technological gadgets, but you won’t find corpses hooked up to lightning conductors,” Purdue soothed him. “That stuff is scheduled for next year.”

The lieutenant, a sharp judge of character, instantly knew that Purdue was joking. Yet by his background check on the world-renowned explorer and scientist, Campbell knew that Purdue was perfectly capable of such atrocious science.

“I have some new information from a reliable source,” Campbell started. Purdue sat down and leaned with his elbows on his thighs to listen as Campbell continued. “Your hit at Sinclair was facilitated by an inside job. Reusch, the impostor, was working under one Walter Guterman, a criminal kingpin we suspect is in alliance with the Order of the Black Sun. It was Guterman who had him killed after he was arrested.”

“My God, the Order is like a cancer, tainting cells everywhere,” Purdue theorized as his mind’s eye ran over the biological crash course in lung cancer he’d been undergoing to help Nina. “And where you cut them out, they just infest another part and grow all over again.”

Campbell agreed. “Funny you should say that, Mr. Purdue, because they’ve spread to another part of your life.”

Alarmed, Purdue sat up. “What do you mean?”

“Your holding company, Scorpio Majorus,” Campbell read from his notes, “owns the Orkney Institute of Science. Am I correct?”

Purdue nodded, but he felt the pit of his stomach fill with a tempest of bile. He had known something was amiss there, and he was about to find out why.

“My source tells me that someone at your clinic has been leaking information to Guterman, and that this information may have jeopardized the safety of a former patient of your clinic…and a friend,” Campbell said. “Dr. Nina Gould.”

“Nina? How?” Purdue shrieked.

“Listen, we will locate Dr. Gould and warn her about a possible attempt to abduct her. We have reason to believe that Guterman wants her alive and that he may set a trap via his operatives in England, where she was invited to teach for a few months,” Campbell shared.

“Her number is discontinued, at least to me,” Purdue lamented, looking dreadfully sad.

“To us as well, but we can locate her from other ways. Don’t worry,” Campbell said. “Just alert her should she contact you first.”

“What does this Guterman want with my clinic? And with Nina? What are we to him?” Purdue inquired.

“Well, I’m not sure how to put this. It sounds quite ridiculous when said out loud,” Campbell groaned. “It appears that Guterman and a few other people involved here, are desperately trying to locate…” the cop looked hesitant to say it, “…the Fountain of Youth.”

“Excuse me?” Purdue said quickly.

“True story. During the Second World War there was a Nazi project called Lebensborn — meaning ‘the Fount of Life.’ Long story short, there are a few people still pursuing this project and they seem to think Dr. Gould’s blood has some sort of resilience,” Lieutenant Campbell revealed. “Aside from gathering the information from your mental control, Mr. Purdue, the bogus therapist was supposed to use you to get to Dr. Gould. Guterman believes, apparently, that Nina Gould holds the Fountain of Youth.”

Purdue’s face went ashen. “How do you know all this? Who told you?” he shouted in panic. “Who helped them get Reusch in to me?”

Campbell did not have to divulge the information, but he felt that Purdue needed to know.

“Melissa Argyle, aged forty-nine, and a subject of Guterman’s Lebensborn project since she was nineteen years old in 1966.”

Purdue dropped his glass.