The Doomsday Machine (Horatio Lyle)

by Catherine Webb

  ‘Good morning, Miss Teresa,’ Thomas mumbled.

  Lady Elwick managed a, ‘Miss’, from somewhere behind her napkin, and Lord Elwick forced a twitch that might have been a smile. Tess exploded across the table - in thirty seconds she had a plate piled so high, she had to rest her chin on the topmost bread roll to stop it falling off, and the edges overflowed with bacon and sausages. Sitting down next to Thomas, she dug into her booty with a combination of fork and fingers, spraying crumbs with each exclamation of ‘Ohohohoh, I want some of that too!’ and, as she reached for an apple, knocking fruit in every direction off the work of art that was the fruit bowl.

  Even Lady Elwick, who from infancy had been taught not to stare, found her eyes straying from the work of finicking through her breakfast. Lord Elwick showed almost an opposite reaction, edging the newspaper closer to his face to obscure the sight of Tess’s table manners until it almost shook against his nose.

  Thomas smiled at Tess and tried not to cry.

  From the door came an embarrassed, ‘Am I late?’ as Lyle shuffled in.

  And that would have been all right, except that with him was a woman, dressed in black clothes that didn’t quite fit, sporting a long cane and a top hat, and smiling at them from behind a pair of glowing green eyes.

  Tess leapt to her feet, as if looking for a window to jump through. Thomas found his hand tightening around a fruit knife, before the realization that it was only solid silver and not nearly magnetic enough sent a shudder right through him.

  In the silence that followed, it was, surprisingly, Lady Elwick who took control.

  ‘Not at all, Mister Lyle,’ she stammered. ‘Although we hadn’t known that we should expect another guest.’

  ‘It’s one of them!’ hissed Tess, who had backed so far away she was almost in the fireplace. ‘It’s gone an’ bewitched Mister Lyle!’

  ‘Teresa, I am not bewitched.’

  ‘He’s not,’ agreed the woman next to him. ‘Although I do suspect his heart palpitates that little bit faster in my presence.’

  Lyle forced a smile. ‘My lord, my lady, Tess, Thomas - this is Miss Lin Zi.’

  ‘We need iron!’ squeaked Tess. ‘You go an’ unbewitch him right now, all right? Else I’ll . . . I’ll run away!’

  ‘Who is this young woman?’ Lord Elwick had to force the words out, so rigid was the expression of distaste on his face.

  To Thomas’s horror, Lin Zi was across the room in an instant and holding out her hand to his father. ‘Miss Lin Zi. Don’t try the intonation, it won’t help.’

  Lord Elwick regarded the proffered hand as if it was covered in warts. ‘I don’t believe we’ve met. Why are you here?’

  ‘Ah, yes. What happened is that I broke into your house last night - which was pitifully easy to do. Then I sneaked around until I found Lyle’s room, hid inside, kidnapped him - admittedly, Miss Thomas -’

  ‘. . . Teresa,’ said Lyle quickly.

  ‘Of course, whichever one you are,’ went on Lin, not missing a beat as she nodded at the cowering Tess, ‘. . . admittedly by bewitching him - and took Mister Lyle to see a friend. As an upshot of this, I am now resolved to assist Mister Lyle in his brave and noble attempt to break into Pentonville Prison.’

  In the silence, you could have heard a mouse sneeze.

  Lyle gave an apologetic smile and a half-shrug. ‘That’s about the truth of it.’

  At length Thomas said, ‘Mister Lyle? Are you sure you are feeling quite well?’

  ‘Give me a magnet and I’ll prove it.’

  ‘Is this a joke?’ Lord Elwick’s lips didn’t seem to move, although his voice boomed off the high walls of the room and made even Lady Elwick wince.

  ‘No,’ began Lin, ‘although I can see the humorous aspects . . .’

  ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘Mister Lyle, are you sure I can’t smooth things over?’ asked Lin, half-turning to him.

  ‘No!’ Lyle scuttled forward and spoke very hastily. ‘My lord, I apologize; there’s a lot that needs explaining.’

  ‘Do you think to mock me? You come here without warning, in the middle of the night; you tell me my son is in danger, my only son; you bring strangers into my house, you bring strangers to my table; you speak of kidnap and prison and breaking the law. You dare to impose your madness on my house, on my home, on -’

  ‘Father!’ Thomas was surprised to hear his own voice snap out across the table. To everyone’s astonishment including his own, Lord Elwick fell silent. Thomas stood up, fists clenched. ‘Father, we know nothing. You know nothing. Until we understand more, let us behave towards this lady with good manners and decorum.’

  Lord Elwick’s mouth hung open like the jaws of a whale. Lin beamed, Lyle gaped, Tess cowered. ‘I am sorry,’ Thomas heard a voice say that might have been his own in ten years’ time, ‘but I now need to conduct important business with my friends.’

  Lord Elwick sat, incapable of reply, his mouth slack. Lady Elwick murmured, ‘Is this really what you want, Thomas?’

  ‘Yes. Please, Mother, this is what I want.’

  ‘Very well. We shall leave you to discuss your business. My lord?’

  ‘Is this how it is to be, Thomas?’

  Lord Elwick looked tired, Thomas realized. His shoulders drooped, his chin hung lower, his liver-spotted hands lay limp on the table. His grey eyes, always pale, seemed lighter than Thomas had perceived them whenever their look had reinforced some bellowed order.

  ‘Later, I shall be able to explain.’ Thomas felt his confidence suddenly draining.

  ‘I . . . would like that.’ Lord Elwick rose, took his wife’s arm and half-bowed to Lin Zi. ‘Madam, I apologize for speaking in haste. Please, feel free to help yourself to whatever you must.’

  Lin bowed back. ‘My lord, you are a kind man and a good father.’

  Thomas felt himself go cold with anticipation. He scrutinized his father for any trace of . . . otherness, daring the woman with green eyes to have touched Lord Elwick’s mind, to have interfered in his thoughts, to have even considered manipulating his father like they had: the Tseiqin; them; evil and cruel and . . .

  Lord Elwick gave a smile, and there was nothing stiff or artificial in it. He bowed once more, and with his wife, left the room.

  Thomas found himself letting out a breath that had been sitting in his lungs like lead. His eyes wandered across the table, seeking nothing in particular. From the fireplace, Tess hissed, ‘Bigwig?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Teresa?’

  ‘Do summat about the evil lady!’

  Thomas glanced at Lin and Lyle. ‘Mister Lyle, are you bewitched?’

  ‘Nope,’ replied Lyle.

  ‘Why ain’t you bewitched, Mister Lyle?’ shrilled Tess from the corner.

  ‘I can answer that!’ said Lin. ‘It’s because we need Mister Lyle conscious and self-aware in order to break into a place full of iron where our power would never work, and which indeed has been designed for that effect. Thus, bewitching him would serve no purpose!’ She saw the children’s horrified expressions. In a darker tone she added, ‘Oh yes, and because bewitching him wouldn’t be nice.’

  Lyle opened his arms, a smile straining his features. ‘See? What better answer could you hope for?’

  Tess was unhappy. She was unhappy for a lot of reasons: because Thomas was sitting in a silence even thicker than his usual cloud of abstraction; because breakfast was getting cold and she found that eating and concentrating all at once was surprisingly difficult, what with all that bacon . . . bacon . . . and eggs and ham and sausage and bread and buns and jams and . . .

  Why else was she unhappy? She was unhappy because no one had commented on how pretty her hair looked; because Mister Lyle appeared tired and was talking in that low, flat voice he used when what he was saying was bad and he couldn’t care any more; and because sitting opposite her and licking jam out of the pot from one long, dainty finger, was a Tseiqin.

  Then Mister Lyle said the one thing that could ma
ke it worse. ‘The Tseiqin really do want us to break into Pentonville Prison.’

  Tess managed not to choke on a fingerful of jam. Thomas made a noise as if he’d just swallowed a spider. Curled up by the fireplace, Tate sneezed.

  ‘What?’ squeaked Tess. ‘I don’t know what part of what you just gone and said scares me more, Mister Lyle.’

  ‘You’re confident that you’re not even a little bewitched, sir?’ hazarded Thomas.

  ‘Look, bring me a magnet and I’ll bloody prove it!’ snapped Lyle. He looked and sounded like what he was: a man who hadn’t been getting enough sleep. ‘I’m not even sure I’m going to do this damn thing for the Tseiqin!’

  ‘Horatio,’ sighed Lin, ‘do we need to go into morality again?’

  ‘Morality?’ Thomas’s voice was so high, Tess almost worried that he’d sat on something sharp. ‘Since when did the Tseiqin care about morality? You kidnapped Mister Lyle; you want to hurt us; he came here because of you!’

  ‘Well, actually . . .’ began Lyle, a little sheepishly.

  ‘What?’ Thomas was surprised at his own voice. So was Lyle, who leant back as if trying to get a better look at his friend.

  Lyle said, ‘It’s not the Tseiqin who’ve caused this latest trouble. Not unless you’re going to take it right back to first principles, which is dubious and, I feel, futile.’ He took in Thomas’s expression, then Tess, back to gobbling her way through the fruit bowl, and Tate, who wagged his tail in the manner of a creature also aware of the food at the table. Lyle sighed. ‘It’s Havelock - Havelock is the one threatening you, Thomas. Havelock is the one who was involved with Berwick, Havelock is the one who knew about that damn laboratory underneath Baker Street. It’s Havelock.’

  ‘Who?’ Thomas was amazed at himself, at how much he sounded like his father, the rich, indignant tones of aristocratic good breeding rolling off his tongue like magma down the side of a volcano. ‘Who is this Havelock, and why are you afraid of him?’

  ‘Oh, he bad,’ offered Tess through a mouthful of fruit.

  ‘He is a gentleman who has dedicated his life to the cause of technology,’ said Lin. ‘He seeks to build a new world out of iron and cogs; he attempts to spread the power of machinery.’

  ‘And why’s that bad?’ asked Thomas.

  She met his eyes. Instinctively Thomas recoiled, then found he couldn’t look away. But it wasn’t the same compulsion as when he had looked before into a Tseiqin’s eyes. There was none of that sinking loss, the sense of drowning, or of suffocating with a mouth full of dry dirt. It was something more honest than that. In a voice like wind chimes, she said, ‘Because he does not consider others when he builds. He creates only for himself, and sees in machines only power, not wonder.’

  Thomas hesitated, the sharp reply dying on his lips, and a little ‘Oh’ escaping him instead.

  ‘The Tseiqin do claim,’ Lyle’s quiet voice oozed scepticism, ‘that Havelock is building a machine designed to kill all Tseiqin in the city, all at once.’

  Tess raised a hand. ‘Not to be too blunt about this, present company excepted, Mister Lyle, but ain’t the Tseiqin sort of . . . evil? As in how they’ve got evil schemes and do evil things an’ all?’

  ‘It’s true,’ admitted Lyle, glancing at the now impassive Lin, ‘that their record to date hasn’t been . . . comforting. But there is something in what they say: Berwick’s work seems to have been in the areas of magnetism and explosives - I don’t know how in the world he intends to combine these two ideas. I don’t even know if it’s possible to create any machine -’

  ‘Not a machine, Mister Lyle, the Machine.’

  ‘It’s just the way she speaks what makes it seem scary, right, Mister Lyle?’

  Lyle drew the long breath of a man attempting a valid scientific point and finding himself thwarted at every turn, ‘. . . if it’s even possible, as I was saying, to construct any machine capable of carrying out the purpose which the Tseiqin have described. But . . .’

  ‘But?’ Tess scowled and waited for the bad news.

  ‘But . . . Berwick is still somewhere out there, and he’s involved somehow. He’s still my friend, I still wish to know what’s happened to him, and there is . . .something. Something wrong happening.’

  ‘How can you be sure, sir?’ asked Thomas.

  ‘Wherever Havelock goes, there’s always something wrong,’ groaned Lyle. ‘It’s one of the few certainties I have in this life.’

  They all considered this. Eventually Lin said brightly, ‘All right, humans!’ Three pairs of disbelieving eyes turned to her. Thomas was openly gaping. She waved her hands, with the gesture of someone who is having trouble communicating. ‘People! Companions! Darwinian equals in the evolutionary processes! Citizens of Her Majesty’s Empire! You lot! Now that you’ve done your reasoning, worked things out and so on, all very commendable, et cetera, how exactly are you going to get into the Model Prison, and out again with one of England’s most wanted criminals?’

  ‘Who said anything about leaving with him,’ exclaimed Lyle, ‘when all we need is a conversation?’

  Lin hesitated. ‘You know, Mister Lyle, I personally find you a charming specimen, but I doubt whether this gentleman will be so inclined to talk to you.’

  ‘I am not breaking anyone out of prison! I am not creating a riot, I am not . . . going to break the law; excuse me, miss, but I have scruples. All I want is a decent conversation.’

  CHAPTER 8

  Prison

  Pentonville Prison. Situated at the top of the Caledonian Road, near the railway lines sprawling out from King’s Cross Station, it was, to Victoria’s London, unique. Here, Her Majesty’s Government had tried to build something that had a function; that was self-sustaining and viable. Something that wasn’t, in short, converted from the cells of the Old Bailey or the ramshackle remnants of some medieval palace with thick walls; something embodying an intention, a design, meant for just one purpose and that purpose to be fulfilled to the hilt. Situated behind high brick walls, everything about the prison - cells, courtyards, narrow corridors, iron doors, and halls where the condemned could spend their days picking oakum along silent rows of benches while, naturally, considering the reformation of their souls - was intended as the perfect fusion of function, form, efficiency and economy. For no more than fifteen shillings a week, the prisoner in his solitary cell could contemplate his misdeeds and consider how he might best return something to society, while such hearty, healthy activities as the crank and the treadmill, forever clocking up a futile total towards a pointless goal, would give him something to do when these good thoughts failed. The first prisoner ever to enter Pentonville Prison, twenty years before, would have been dazzled by the whiteness of the walls, the relative security of the cells, more than just iron bars set into a rotten wall, but solid in their construction, the open structure in its heart so that the warders could watch the prisoners at all times, without the prisoner necessarily being aware of it, and the smell of nothing more than whitewash and boiling cabbage.

  Without a doubt, the prison was cleaner, brighter and better laid out than the half-converted old palaces and courtrooms that had housed more rats than inmates and where light had hardly ever entered. Moreover, the Model Prison was not just a holding point before transportation: it was a place of reform, where the condemned would learn new skills and trades so that they might re-enter society as useful citizens. And if indeed there was any one thing that characterized Pentonville Prison, it was the silence. From quarter to six every morning with the ringing of the morning bell to wake them, to the evening lockdown, the silence buzzed like a bee trapped in the ear, a constant, conscious awareness, the total straining of the senses every hour of every day to hear the tiniest noise, the scratching of a rat’s claws on the floor, the dripping of the pump in the courtyard, broken only by the call of, ‘Three D! Step quick, Three D! Two A, the Chaplain wants a word about those tracts he lent you . . . One C, scrub those floors!’ Those shouts, echoing through the
wings of the prison splayed like a strange five-pointed cross in the creeping suburb of north-east London, came as relief, a blissful reminder in the loneliness of the high-ceilinged, empty cells, that life somehow went on, that the prisoner alone hadn’t fallen deaf from lack of hearing, or dumb from the inability to speak.

  At night, the quiet was broken only by the wagon come from the courts with a new load of prisoners, or going to the docks with the next batch to be sent overseas or put on the hulks just offshore, or the distant rattle of a late goods train from the north, the whistle as it went somewhere else, somewhere far, far away from these thick walls and lifeless corridors. And sometimes, for those who were near the bottom floors and swore that the door at the back of the warder’s office couldn’t lead outside, the way the maps claimed they did, there was said to be the sound of someone whispering very quietly to himself, in the darkness:

  ‘Let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out Let Me Out Let Me Out Let Me Out I’ll See You Burn For All You Have Done!’

  Then the clang of a staff on iron, and no more from the darkness far beneath.

  In a police lodging house in the heart of Soho, a man had just fallen out of his hammock where he had been happily reading a book of cheap poetry purchased from one of the tattlers on Drury Lane. He fell with a bang and a shriek.

  ‘You want me to do what?’

  ‘Charles, don’t be difficult,’ said Horatio Lyle, brushing the policeman’s uniform down and helping him to his feet.

  ‘You know this is . . .’

  ‘. . . more than your job’s worth, yes, yes, I know. But think of all the times I’ve helped you!’

  ‘Such as when?’ Constable Charles - poor, unfortunate Constable Charles had been lured to join the Metropolitan Police from the Welsh hills and coal mines south of Abergavenny as much by the uniform’s shiny buttons as by the promise of justice for all. He was not equipped to deal with Horatio Lyle in full placatory mode, and certainly not when at the same time Tate was quietly chewing on the leg of his regulation blue trousers.