I turned back to the window. "I am going, then," I told him over my shoulder. "If you are ready to decide that what Freeman says is true—if you are now ready for yet another change, and would like to be free of Saville and his friends once more_then come with me now, and let me see you safely outside the grounds."
He turned from me to stare at the table, where his work awaited him. "Freeman misunderstood me if he thinks I want to leave. That cannot be, just now. This experiment is on the verge of completion."
I could see that, indeed, the body on the table looked as alive and ready as any of his experimental bodies ever did. It was female, and it—or most of its parts—had recently been young and healthy.
"Now," I insisted. "Now, or never."
"I cannot."
Without another word I departed. In the space of a few minutes I had picked up Freeman's letter to his father, and had deposited it at the gatekeeper's lodge. I left it there in the middle of a stack of other outgoing communications, where no literate person will cast eyes upon its address, or pay the least attention to it, until it is far from that estate.
Then I returned again to Freeman's room. I tried to move cautiously, but something, perhaps my continued scrambling around on the outside of the house, or the noise I had made in breaking the bars on the laboratory window, had already given us away. Saville's household had been quietly alerted. An ambush had been set.
The timing with which the trap was sprung was excellent. Scarcely had I reentered Freeman's room than the door burst open—if he had locked it, it had been silently and almost immediately unlocked from outside—and our enemies, armed, burst in upon us. Saville himself was in the center of the doorway, with Walton on his right hand and Small on his left. A crowd of armed footmen were gathered at his back.
Trusting that Saville still did not wish me dead, I ignored the deafening shouts for my surrender, and the firearms that were leveled at me. Immediately I lunged for the window and scrambled back out onto the roof. No shots were fired.
Freeman, who had been caught too far from the windows to attempt such an escape, reacted with remarkable quickness of wit. He staggered and fell, away from me, as if I had thrown him to the floor. Then, pointing after me with a quivering arm, he immediately set up a cry of alarm. The impression was conveyed that I had been attacking him, and that he was glad to see our host and his armed retainers break in. Meanwhile he gave me to understand with a wink that I should not take all this too seriously.
I, crouched once more on the narrow ledge just outside the window, hesitated, ready to spring either direction.
Small aimed a firearm at the window where I was, and again cried for me to surrender, but he did not fire when I ignored him. Walton and Saville were shouting at me simultaneously, and I could not distinguish the words of either one. Mrs. Saville's face had now appeared in the bedroom doorway behind them, and I could see that she too was armed with a pistol.
Freeman, who had scrambled to his feet now and was talking excitedly to the others, was in no immediate danger. Also I wanted firmer footing, so I abandoned my precarious post outside the window and moved away across the roof. The rain had stopped at last, but the roof tiles were slippery. Lights below me caught my eyes; down there in the grounds were more men, what looked like a small army of footmen and others, all equipped with torches and clubs, and controlling unhappy dogs.
I climbed carefully up one gable, then slid down a new slope slowly, looking the situation over, whilst the crowd of footmen rushed around a wing of the house to get below me again. I wondered what would happen if I were to leap down among them, and came to the conclusion that they would probably jump out of my way, and I would break a leg. Besides, I was not yet ready to leave Freeman.
Once more I moved; once more the roof sloped up before me, then angled down again. People inside the house were running from window to window, trying to keep me in sight. With all the wings, gables, and angles that the house possessed it was a fairly even game.
We reached a temporary stalemate at last. I could still be seen from below, but thought my back was relatively secure. Walton, leaning out a window a few yards below me and in front of me, began a determined effort to keep me talking, my attention fixed on him. I suspected the plan called for others to use the opportunity to sneak up on me from behind and somehow capture me alive.
Mrs. Saville, her lovely figure framed in another window beside Walton's, tried, or pretended to try, to make peace among us all, though she could not keep the anger out of her voice. We all of us ignored her, which I suppose fueled her rage.
Captain Walton, ready to dazzle me with his wit and erudition, freely admitted that he had somewhat abused his poetic license in the creation of that notorious book.
I said: "I do not approve of my memoirs, as you have created them for me."
"You are of course free to compose your own."
That was said, naturally, in perfect, serene confidence that I should never be able to do anything of the kind.
"I intend doing so."
He took it well. Such a statement, from me, could make no impression on him, really. "I should imagine that the effort will bring you to a better appreciation of what I have done. Even if you die tonight, as you seem determined to do, people are going to remember you because of me. What I have written of you."
"Indeed."
"I even went out of my way to add a touch of sympathy to your character_and a touch of intelligence and elegance."
Saville, who had been out of my sight for a while, had now evidently given what he considered the necessary orders to his footmen. He came forward, in the next window over, as if he had been attending to me all the time, and picked up the conversation. He seconded what Walton had said. Saville was rather proud of the book too, and regretted that it had to be put forward as a fiction.
It was at about this time that I realized that some time had passed since I had seen Small. Obviously he would be busy, probably behind me somewhere. But doing what? My back was against a wall, and the roof above that would be exceedingly difficult, I thought, for any mere human to clamber about on.
"Then," I asked Saville, "you think that readers are not really likely to believe it?"
"More of 'em will read it, since we called it fiction. As to belief, perhaps. Perhaps not. Matters are never that simple where books are concerned." Saville sighed. "I genuinely regret," he added, "not being able to keep a closer control over the writing and editing. But then, one cannot do everything. There is never time."
More faces and guns, in yet another window. There was Freeman, looking rather grim. Still I might have got away, as I thought, fairly easily, a feint in one direction, a quick scramble in the other. None of these people were really aware as yet of how quickly I could move. But I continued to feel a reluctance to abandon Freeman, who I was sure could seal his father's loyalty to me. His pretence of enmity towards me had been well performed, but I was not convinced that all of the audience had been thoroughly taken in. Once I was gone, temporarily out of their reach again, they would have time for some leisurely discussion among themselves, and Freeman, now being ignored, might not fare so well.
A new factor entered the equation, a new face appeared at the window beside Saville. Our noise had been enough to disturb even Victor Frankenstein in his eyrie; or else Saville had dispatched a messenger to bring him out.
My creator no sooner saw what was taking place, than he wanted to act as an intermediary. He wrung his hands. "Oh God! That what I wanted to accomplish has come to this!"
He wished aloud that we could all let bygones be bygones, with regard to the injuries we had all done one another.