Chapter 12

Clyde told him that he was to act for him in purchasing various company shares on occasions that Clyde would stipulate. Clyde handed over, guess what? Leather bags containing ingots of gold to be converted to cash when investments were due to be made, and an additional instruction that all dividends each year were to be ploughed back into more shares in the company until Clyde said otherwise.

The lawyer had an idea that insider trading might be involved, that Clyde knew something he shouldn’t be aware of. That being so, his investments were probably going to do well, so Shetland made purchases of the same share selections for himself from money he had inherited from his grandfather. Perfectly legal, as he had no possible insider knowledge, just a hunch. He has benefited from that initial presumption over the years since, and while Clyde built up large shareholdings, Shetland also did well with his own investments.

He had often wondered what was happening when he didn’t meet Clyde again, but written messages with instructions appeared inside the office in mysterious circumstances – they were just found there in the morning - along with the appropriate number of gold bars for the required purchases.

I explained that my fiancee, Robert McIntyre, was the buyer who had recently purchased the house that had been up for sale for years, and who had provided the stipulated gold bars in payment, despite the ban on viewing.

Now comes the real question, I told him.

Robert found some valuable items inside. Checking the sale documents, he found that all the contents were part of the sale, with a notional nil value, and were to be regarded as a gift to the new owner.

Shetland nodded. “Yes, that was what Mr Clyde wanted with the house. I know, it was most peculiar, almost as if the arrangements were aimed at a specific person, but how would he know that such a person would turn up? My suspicions were that he had performed some criminal act and intended to reappear in a new guise and officially buy the property in his new name; he always seemed to have a supply of gold, somehow. But that never happened, unless your Robert McIntyre was previously James Clyde.”

I assured him that my Robert was too young to have been some other adult previously; that his life was an open book, and that my intended was too honest to have been involved in devious dealings on the stock exchange. All Bob wanted was to transfer the ownership documents into his own name for the benefit of our children if we have any. He has no intention of selling off shares for now.

Another factor, I told him, is that he thinks your James Clyde is dead. There was a man’s body found on the streets of Kilmacolm that was never identified. Possibly if you ask the police they may be able to provide an image of his face. Would you recognise his face?

“Most probably,” he said. “The arrangements with that man were so unusual that I made a point of taking note of his face, height and build, in case he was a criminal of some kind, perhaps a fraudster that I was unwittingly becoming involved with. I was trying to take sensible precautions.”

Anyway, Shetland promised to make enquiries about the dead man, and see what arose from it.

After that, I asked about transferring the documents to you, technically as a gift. He said he might have to first get James Clyde treated as deceased under an action of declarator at the sheriff court. ‘The property your fiance bought was James Clyde’s official residence of record, even though I have no knowledge of him ever spending time there; he may have done, for I occasionally sent him documents to that address, but not in the last several years.’

Sandy paused her tale, and I asked, “What did Shetland say about costs of the transfer operation and any other costs?”

“He was vague about amounts, but specific about who pays. The costs of transferring ownership would be charged to your account, but the action of declarator would be charged to Clyde’s account with the solicitor, as there remains a balance in his name.”

“That’s not a problem for us. Either we can use one of the gold bars, or get him to sell a few shares, enough to cover the transfer fees. Any mention of what he is going to charge us to do the transfers, as a solicitor?”

“It wasn’t mentioned when I was there, and I forgot to question him about the amount; whether it was a fixed charge or a percentage fee.”

I muttered, “We can afford it, either way. I was more wondering if we had a basis for threatening him if we saw a need to do so.”

“He appeared to be quite affable, Bob. I get the impression that his real worry will be, will his retainer stop?”

The penny dropped with me. “Oh, of course! It must have been a sizable amount to keep him contented all these years. Should we offer to take him on as our solicitor and maintain the retainer?”

Sandy challenged that with, “When Daddy is a solicitor? Why do we need another one?”

I backed off.

“I hadn’t thought of your Dad taking over. Sorry for that lapse. Can they work it out between them, so that we use your Dad for future transactions but Shetland keeps some of our business?”

“I’ll speak to Dad about it. If he already has a full slate of clients, he may not be interested in more work, but if it is for his daughter and her husband-to-be, he may want to look after our interests.”

I was enthralled with the idea of marriage to Sandy, and the associated liaison with Georgina, but underlying that enthusiasm was my concern over the time/space machine with its two control rooms in Gourock in 1960/1, and Greenock in 2026. I was insecure mentally in that I did not know for certain what would happen in 2026 with the laboratory.

I pondered the possibility of permanently closing the outer doorway to the rail tunnel and thus prevent any physical access. That mental picture then became obscured by the idea of invasion from overhead or by some tunnelling through to the lab. The long corridor through to the outer door told me that the lab was well inside the Devonian sandstone that the rail tunnel went through. Invasion from overhead was unlikely as the tunnel ran under the busy Union Street and any activity into the ground would be noted and most probably halted by the road authority, for the rail tunnel roof was a mere 15 feet below the ground surface. By the same reasoning, strenuous activity within the tunnel, trying to enter that way, would also be noticeable. I would imagine a simple blocking procedure would be enough to halt any possible invader. It would still require me to transport in building materials – bricks, cement, and so on. Laying bricks was not a major task, just onerous and slow if you are not a trained brickie. The more layers I could add, the better the blocking effect. Anyone ever getting through the outside door would be faced with what appeared to be a solid wall, indicating a structural change to the laboratory, or an amendment to where the entrance door was now located.

That would cause confusion to any excavator!

Sandy must have noticed my introspection.

“Bob?”

“Sorry, Sandy; just thinking. That’s what the noise was!”

She blinked at this quip, then let it pass.

“So what are we doing today?”

“I hadn’t come prepared. Sex?”

“No!”

“Oh. Pity. I thought that might be the case, both with you and Georgina: unavailable. What would you prefer?”

“I don’t know; something that we can do together, you and I.”

“I can go along with that. Georgina has to work till five?”

“Yes. It will be just the two of us. How about exploring time?”

“You want a go at that?”

“I might as well learn. Do you think we could both go to the same place, one after the other?”

“That’s an intriguing thought. Anything specific?”

“You went to Glasgow, right?”

“Yes. It was a spot inside the Mitchell Library, out of the view of almost everyone, I thought. You have something in mind?”

“A test. If I can go there and leave some identifying mark, then visit the same place while I am at my university course, I might be able to go to the Mitchell and find my mark. That will show that the machine is working in the same timeline as the rest of the world, and not some other aspect of time.”

I was interested in this experiment, for it had an internal logic to it; a worthwhile test of its operational parameters. I had my own suggestion.

“Then I would like to find if I can carry bricks to the laboratory in 2026. I have a tentative plan to protect the lab from intruders who might use the tunnel to get in.”

“Tell me more,” Sandy demanded.

This meant I had to go over all my thoughts about the device: why it had been built and the probable financing with the prospect of using it for crime. My idea was to cut the criminal financier off from the lab by blocking the entry from the tunnel. Getting in would be too noisy and intrusive for the surrounding busy street and houses, so the chances were that it would be written off as a failure. That was why I wanted to block the entry from the inside using brickwork and cement.

Sandy listened carefully and surprisingly agreed with me.

“What you are imagining is probably true, as a genuine research effort would not need to be hidden, and the financing would be clear from the start, and would not involve just one experimenter. It would have been a team effort, and there is no sign of anyone other than this James Clyde using it. Some other lot must have invented it, and Clyde was stealing it for his own purposes, and was linked to the criminal financier to pay for the sectret lab.

Your plan to prevent access would mean that the only way in and out will be via the transportation device. Yes, it makes sense to me.”

Despite my initial carnal desire to do something of a more social nature together, Sandy needed to explore the capabilities of the device, so we walked back up the hill to the house, and I showed her how the control unit in the front vestibule worked. She had decided that she would scratch a mark on the underside of a table in the room where she arrived. She would use a metal nail file to make the mark. We adjusted the settings for her to visit Glasgow for ten minutes, in real time, and I watched as she vanished.

Having ten minutes to wait for her return, I picked up some of the junk mail from the floor and carried it to the composter box, scattering it around haphazardly to act as a layer. More grass would be placed on top when I got back to cutting what was now ‘my’ grass. Then I walked slowly back to the vestibule, having made a sign of my ownership.

Exactly on the ten-minute mark, Sandy reappeared, and surprised me by holding a small volume. It was an old book by Lord Dunsany: “Plays for earth and air”, published in 1937.

“What did you bring that for, Sandy?”

“An additional test of the system, dear: whether it is easy to carry something back with me in my hands. It appears to work fine.”

“What about your scratchings?”

“I got that done first. It made almost no noise at all, and was just an X, so easy to do with the point of my nail file. These old tables have a tough layer of wax or something. That was what I scratched through.”

“Well, I forgot about bringing a brick, so I can’t try that out for now. I should get a stack of bricks delivered here, so that I can take them through either singly or in pairs. And I should also order a small bag of cement, delivered in a waterproof covering in case I am a day or two late in getting here after the stuff is delivered.”

Then I quickly revised these plans.

“On second thought, I should ask the builder I get to fix the corner footing at the door, to also deliver sixty standard bricks and enough cement for making a wall with them. If he stacks them in a box shape, he can leave the cement inside the brick box and so protect the cement bag from the weather.”

Sandy said, “Good thinking. That trip was fascinating. I was here and suddenly there. It was as if my entire body was transferred in one movement to the new site. That is so weird that I can only imagine it having something to do with the weird things that happen at subatomic level with quantum physics; as if the process has been up-scaled by the device.”

I gawped, asking “What is this about quantum physics?”

“Something I picked up at university. It is mostly theoretical, based on pure mathematics, but Dirac, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Bohr and Born worked most of it out in the twenties and thirties. It was that research that eventually led to the atomic bomb, when someone realised the uranium atom was susceptible to losing a tiny amount of its mass every so often. That is what radioactivity is all about.”

“Oh.” I suddenly had added new information to my knowledge base. “My understanding of physics was based on the classical laws of that subject,” I told Sandy. “There had been a mention in physics class about quantum mechanics, but the teacher seemed to not want to talk about it. If it is about atomic weapons, I can see why.”

“Bob, it is not about atomic weapons; that was incidental. It is about the underlying structure of creation. Quantum entanglement enables a particle to be in two places at once, but in a multiverse, almost as if they were in different aspects of reality; and that a particle is also a wave makes it weirder. There is a lot more, I was told, but we didn’t go into it in depth, as all we were getting was an overview, so that our overall learning was not restricted to our chosen subject.”

“That sounds...” but I was interrupted by a loud banging on the front door. I turned and opened it enough to see a well-dressed middle-aged man standing there.

“Is my daughter in there, young man?” he demanded.

“Daddy!” came from Sandy, and she pushed past me. “What are you doing here?”

“More to the point, what are you doing here, my girl?”

Sandy stiffened, then announced, “I am here with the man I am going to marry, having a look at his house!”

“What man? Where is he?” he asked, glaring at me as if I was the gardener or something. I left the next move to Sandy. She gestured to me to go outside and followed me, closing the door behind her.

“Daddy, allow me to introduce you to Robert McIntyre, owner of this residence and my future husband.”

I grinned stupidly, while her father switched his attention to me.

“Owner? Shetland told me that this house was the property of James Clyde.”

I gladly added, “The operative word is ‘was’ sir. I purchased it recently, as your daughter can confirm. I was hoping to meet you some time soon, after Sandy and I have chosen her engagement ring. A large solitaire diamond was it you wanted, Sandy?”

I swivelled my eyes to see her face, and fortunately she kept it bland.

“Yes, as long as you keep the cost below one hundred pounds, Bob. No need to be too extravagant.”

Her father looked astonished as he kept looking at each of our faces. He was trying to equate my youth with my apparent affluence, and getting nowhere. Sandy had focussed on the name of Shetland, and worked on that.

“You have been speaking with mister Shetland, Daddy? How come?”

“Shetland visited me this morning. He told me you had been to see him and talked about this James Clyde being missing and linked him with the unidentified body at Kilmacolm. Clyde was a client of his, so he visited the police in Greenock and they showed him a drawing of the face of an unidentified body found at Kilmacolm some time back. Shetland recognised him as Clyde, and so provided the police with an identity. He didn’t have much more information for the police, as he had not seen the man in about ten years, but he remained puzzled at how you, Sandy, knew that the dead man was probably Clyde. It puzzles me too, as I had never heard of the man.”

Sandy told him, “I was asking on behalf of Bob, as Bob was not available on weekdays. The documents on this house gave James Clyde as the vendor, and Bob wanted clarification on the conditions attached to the sale. Unusually, the sale grants ownership of all contents to the purchaser.”