Predatory.
The man’s hook of a nose reminded him of the buzzards that drifted on the updrafts over the Yorkshire crags, looking for easy pickings. He hunched in on himself and racked his brain for what his next move should be.
Despite all his attempts at entering the mind of the man he sought, Albert kept drifting off to his amatory campaign concerning Rosalind Wells. Potter had come across her at a meeting of the Fabians three years earlier, and had been bowled over by her imperious manner. And her shapely figure and big brown eyes. She was somewhat German-looking – a trait that was fashionable amongst the intellectuals with whom Albert fancied he belonged. So Potter had pressed his suit in his usual blunt way. He was at first mortified that she professed not to be aware of this, but that had not deterred him, nor blunted the ardour of his campaign. He had known from the start that he was the perfect match for her – it would just take some time to convince her of the fact. What the eye saw was not always the full picture.
He gazed admiringly at his own reflection in the window, only half noticing the build-up of dark, heavy clouds outside the carriage. His rather short torso and legs obscured, the image that stared back was of a man with a thick mane of hair and luxuriant moustache and goatee beard. He preened a little, then began to doze off in the stuffy carriage.
He was beginning to sweat heavily, and his head pounded in rhythm with the thump of the train’s motion along the track. His persecutor sat diagonally opposite him, mocking him with a leer every time he looked up. The sharp-faced man had not removed his curly-brimmed bowler, and a shadow hung over his brow. But it did not conceal the man’s eyes. They glowed like red-hot coals at the fiery base of a furnace.
He clutched his stiff collar, trying to loosen it as his breathing became more and more difficult. His heart pounded faster in his chest, and his lungs strained to draw in the suddenly thick, clammy air of the railway carriage. He was suffocating – why did the other passengers not feel the same? Everyone else in the carriage seemed oblivious to his condition. In fact, he realised they were blurring out of focus as if seen through a badly adjusted camera lens. He blinked his eyes trying to clear his vision, but it was no use. The only face he could see clearly was that of the tall, thin man opposite as he leaned forward and said something to him. The words were lost in their own echoes, and he squeezed his eyes shut to close out the man’s mocking face. A series of juddering crashes jarred through his body, and he almost cried out loud in fear.
His eyes flew open.
Then he realised the commotion was merely the train crossing the familiar set of junctions in the outer suburbs of Dijon. Almost at once the train settled to a more soothing rhythm, and he composed himself. He told himself he was being foolish – it was mere coincidence that this innocent man had seemed to dog his footsteps around the station. Like him, the man had been waiting for the Paris train, so it was only reasonable to assume they would have both been in the same places at the same time. Even the man’s dash for the very carriage he had chosen could be explained by his wish to avoid the downpour which had suddenly swept the uncovered platform further up the stationary train.
No, he was imagining things, without a doubt.
In an effort to normalise the situation, he even forced himself to look directly at the man and squeeze a smile onto his parched, dry lips. The man spoke, but again the words did not register:
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I was saying, you look a little pale, a little sickly. Perhaps that box on your lap is restricting your circulation. It does look very heavy. Here, let me take it from you.’
His loud protests, as he clutched the box even more tightly to his chest, keeping it from the outstretched hands of the man, cut through the other passengers’ indifference. Now everyone in the carriage was giving him a curious and pitying look. His moment of calm was shattered, and he pressed as far back in his seat as possible, wishing for it to swallow him up. His mind raced once more as he plotted a possible escape from the tall, thin man, who was firmly fixed once again in his mind as the destroyer of all his dreams, the thief of all his hopes.
Potter woke with a start as the train rumbled over a set of points. He had been dreaming, and couldn’t shake off the image of Le Prince being pursued by someone. A man who wanted Le Prince’s invention. If Le Prince had truly created a moving-picture camera, and solved the problem of the medium on which to fix the images, then there would be those who wanted it. Either to claim it as their own, or to stifle it and promote their own invention. Mrs Le Prince had said the American inventor Edison was working in the same field as her husband.
If Potter was to solve this riddle, though, he had to work out how Le Prince, or his supposed assailant, come to that, had disappeared into thin air. Potter had got off the train at every station on the way down from Paris to Dijon, and spoken briefly with each stationmaster. Every one had been certain – as they had during the police enquiry only weeks after the disappearance – that no one resembling Louis Le Prince had alighted at their station. Now Potter was travelling back along the same line, no wiser after his interview with Albert Le Prince than he had been at the start of it all.
As the train rumbled through the peaceful countryside, he felt more and more agitated. The carriage was gradually emptying, as at each station the train stopped, and people got up and left. Soon, he would be left alone with the tall, thin man in his voluminous cape. And he could not begin to imagine what was on the man’s mind, for his dark, glowing eyes betrayed nothing but emptiness. He felt pinned to his seat by their steely gaze, and when the train slowed for the next station, and their final two travelling companions rose to leave, he could do nothing. He wanted to leap up, grasp the elderly couple’s arms, and convince them to stay. Perhaps he could suggest they alter their plans to get out at…where was it? He spotted the station sign as the train juddered to a halt.
Sens. They were halfway to Paris already. Why didn’t they stay with him and enjoy the pleasures of the capital? If they stayed on with him to the terminus, he would treat them to a meal at Maxim’s. And pay for a stay in a luxurious hotel for the night, if only they would stay on the train. Who wanted to finish their day in dreary old Sens? He would even offer to take their picture with his new camera – immortalise them on Dr Marey’s new celluloid film. His pleas boiled in his brain, but remained unspoken, and the elderly couple descended slowly from the carriage, and were gone. The heavy camera box felt like an unbearable burden on his lap.
But their departure left him with an idea – a final defence. He surreptitiously turned the camera around on his lap until the two lenses in the front of the box pointed across the carriage at his tormentor. Though the stock inside the box was brittle, unlike the new celluloid, he had to hope it might work. He peered in the viewfinder set in the top, looking steadily at the image inverted in the little brass frame. Strangely, the intervention of the lenses between him and the man calmed him, as though the lens had captured and reduced the man to manageable proportions. He was able for the first time to look directly at him. No longer were his eyes so demonic, his posture so threatening. He was simply a tall, nondescript man sitting on a train, bored by the long journey, and anxious to return to his family in Paris.