Preston Child - The Fountain of Youth

“It’s not much,” she sighed. “Just 250 ml, but it should be sufficient, right?”

“Aye, that will do,” Sam replied, smiling. “Thank you.”

Johild was positively spellbound by the beautiful colors floating from the exposed hole. “How did you get the rock away?” she asked, but Heri just cleared his throat. Then she noticed the broken stones surrounding the hole. “It’s hard to see if there’s water in there behind all this blinding light, but I’ll admit, I’m too scared to stick my hand into it.”

“We’re pretty sure it is made by magnetic particles, Jo,” Heri said, setting her at ease. “I’m sure you can touch it.” He looked up at Gunnar for support and his uncle reluctantly pretended to be sure.

Johild leaned forward, her hand outstretched towards the ethereal pastels dancing in mid-air. Holding their breath, they waited for a reaction from the anomaly. Looking back at the men, Jo continued on, dipping her fingertips into the colors. The gentle particles merely morphed and mixed until they settled again in a new arrangement. Johild giggled and exclaimed, “It doesn’t hurt, but it…it…”

“Tingles,” her father said at the same time she did. “Yes, I remember it vividly. The tingling, like when you’re walking down a dark corridor and your skin tightens with a thousand little painless needles.”

“Adrenaline?” Sam asked.

“Kind of, but there’s…more,” Gunnar affirmed. “Go on, touch it.”

“Will just my hand stay young then?” asked Sam, smiling at the others as he stuck his hand through the dancing haze of green and pink. It was peculiar for sure. He had to lie on his stomach on the edge to get his arm far enough down to reach the water.

“Looks like the water level has sunk a bit,” Sam reported, using Jo’s bottle to scoop up some water. “I can’t wait to hear what Purdue makes of this.”

“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.