Chapter 2
The old Fogg townhouse in London was a stately two-hundred-year-old residence. It was a bit worse for wear when Sir Boniface Fogg reopened it when he married. His father had avoided London like it still carried plague. As such, it had fallen into disrepair. He and his wife had modernized it to 1815 standards and let his mother help redecorate it for them. The venerable lady had been fond of yellows and pinks. How Boniface had stood it all those years, Phileas couldn't imagine. But then again, that may have been the reason he bought the residence on Governor's Square.
When Phileas took the townhouse over in 1842, it had to be gone through again. It was structurally sound but lacked gas lighting and indoor water. With Rebecca's help, he had updated the decor with wood paneling and more masculine colors. When done, it made a fashionable bachelor's home. The only feminine room in the place was where Rebecca occasionally stayed. She had lived with him for a year after his brother's death and then had moved out shortly after his father's death. Now she had the larger house on Governor's Square as her own.
That mausoleum, in Phileas's opinion, should have been closed; but Rebecca had wanted her own place. Heaven forbid, I tell her what to do. My moving into that one with her might have been the better choice, but I couldn't and still couldn't bring himself to enter father's house, not after our estrangement, never reconciled before his death.
Big Ben tolled the time as Phileas Fogg walked home, ten at night. I'm early. Hadn't been able to concentrate on the cards. The result of the jolt to my understanding of the world. I so enjoyed ignorance. How does one unsee, and unknow… A starship hidden in a bell tower, of all things… A creature from another world and centuries in the past, reanimated… And then the Prussians…
Well, the tower has been rebuilt, the starship and its owner are gone, and Von Kessler has been evicted from England. Verne is safe and sound back in Paris. Just can't get my world rebalanced. To have a man from the stars and a space vessel, hidden away all these years, suddenly take off into the blue before my very eyes…
Phileas entered the house and stood in the quiet of the hall for a moment, one way led to bed; the other to his brandy. No, upstairs with you.
The light of the gas lamps outside shined through the upper dormer, lighting his way. As he made it to the center of the hall near his room, voices came to him from the attic level. Two distinct voices, male and female, talking. Not Passepartout. His guests? No, guests are highly unlikely.
Thieves? Up there?
Phileas went into his room to get the pistol he kept by his bed and walked up the stairs. Passepartout stood in shadow in the hall, coming out of his bedroom, dressed in a robe and slippers over his night shirt. He also carried a pistol. The voices coming from the storeroom grew stronger.
"Bring it along. We can give it to Dave's little boy for a present," a woman said. "There, it all fits, except the skirt hoop. Nice, I found this big old carpet bag. I'll just get out of this dress, and we can go. Her voice suddenly rose, frightened. "What's that? Planes again?"
"Hell! The air raid siren! Get downstairs!" A man ordered.
"Where!"
"Anywhere but here in this attic! Leave the toy and GO!"
Phileas and Passepartout set themselves. When the door flew open. Their two young thieves ran out as if for their lives. Phileas stepped forward and caught the young man by the throat pulling him nearly off his feet in the process of shoving him into a wall. He had afore mentioned carpet bag in his arm. The bag went flying.
Passepartout caught the fleeing woman. Her hair was down, flying about her head like a black cloud. She was small and dressed in a green silk evening gown. Well not dressed. The gown wasn't fastened. Passepartout got an arm around her waist and pulled her to him. How had they made it up the stairs and into the storeroom to play dress up? He felt ashamed. There is no explaining or excusing the lapse. Odd, no valuables were kept in the storeroom. Where they really just after clothes?
"Let go!" The girl shouted. "We must get out of here! We must get to shel…" She stopped screaming and struggling, going suddenly still at the silence of the house. "They're gone."
The man Phileas had, appeared to be wearing one of his old evening coats over his clothing. He had also stopped struggling, listening to the quiet. "What are you doing in my house?" Phileas growled in his ear.
The young woman turned, took in the gun Phileas was holding on her partner and went into another frenzy of movement. "No!"
Passepartout had loosened his hold on her when she had stopped struggling. She took advantage of it to stomp his foot, not realizing he also had been a weapon. Once freed of his hold, the girl jumped across the distance at Phileas, grabbing and dragging his weapon away from her partner so fast Phileas didn't have time to react to her reckless motion.
She shouted. "Don't shoot! Please!"
A four-way struggle then ensued. Passepartout tried to drag the girl off his arm, the young woman was doggedly refusing to let go, and the man still in Phileas's hold violently wiggled his way loose. The male intruder's feet hit some of the scattered clothing from the opened bag in his struggle. His feet slipped, sending all but Passepartout to the floor.
Passepartout managed to break the girl's hold on Phileas' arm, pulling her out of the pile in the floor. As she struggled to no effect in his now secure grip, the other two fought over the pistol. The contest ended quickly. Once Phileas was free of the wildcat, he knocked the pistol away. He pulled his free hand back. It plowed into the thief with a vicious upper cut to the jaw. The younger man was stunned senseless by the blow. His head banged against the floor, going still. When Phileas recovered his pistol and came up off the ground.
Passepartout let the girl loose. She knelt at her partner's side. "Loren, Loren!"
The young man shook his head, pulling up on his elbows and worked his way up against the wall. The girl hovered hovering over him turned on Phileas, eyes spitting fury. "What are you doing here? Why did you attack us?" She stood up between them and her accomplice like a mother bear protecting a cub. "There is nothing to steal here!"
Phileas was too stunned to speak for a moment. Was she a lunatic? "Excuse me miss, but this is my house, and I will be the one demanding answers! Who are you?"
"I am Lacinda Fogg and that is my brother, Loren." She stood as tall as she could over a head shorter than him. "And this house belongs to our family!"
Phileas had never heard of a Lacinda or Loren Fogg. She is crazy. I have a lunatic and a thief in my house.
Passepartout lit the hall lamp. In the light, on closer inspection, Phileas stared frowning. Both young people had strong Fogg features. The young man looks like me, early twenties, and the girl—Fogg features and the temper branded plainly across her face.
Her brother came to his feet behind her, shakily using the wall to support himself. He put a restraining hand on his sister's shoulder and pulled her out from in front of him. "Lacey stop it."
Loren Fogg took a long look at both his attacker and his nightshirt clad helper as he tried to catch his breath. Something was very wrong here. The house was differemt. The light switch was no longer on the wall where it had been. The light fixture that had hung from the ceiling was gone, too. "Who are you, Mister?"
"Phileas Fogg," Phileas said.
The girl did a double take, staring at Phileas as if he had grown horns. The young man, however, seemed to have expected the answer. "Sir." Loren swallowed. "Pleased to meet you. Unless you're a very solid ghost," he said, rubbing his jaw; "something very strange has just happened."
"I'm Loren Fogg, your great grandson."
