by Oxley, Peter
I knocked on Maxwell’s door with as stern a rap as I could manage. After wasting time being interrogated, I now had some questions of my own.
Kate answered the door and grinned at me. “Good afternoon, Gus,” she said.
“Is he in?” I asked. “I really need to see him.”
She glanced back into the house and then said, slightly louder than was necessary, “Mr. Potts is certainly not in the house at the moment.” She stood to one side and winked at me.
“Thanks,” I mouthed to her as I stepped into the house.
“I must protest, Mr. Potts,” she said loudly, nodding toward the door to Maxwell’s downstairs laboratory. “You really must leave right now.” She shut the front door behind me.
I flashed her a grin and stepped into the laboratory, followed by Kate still making a show of trying to stop me.
Maxwell glared at us. “I told you I did not wish to be disturbed,” he said.
“I know,” said Kate. “But he pushed past me before I could stop him.”
Maxwell snorted. “I have seen you move, Kate. You are more than a match for my brother.”
“Let her be, Max,” I said. “I have something which I urgently need to discuss with you.”
“You will need to be quick,” he said. “I am due to leave for the Royal Society.”
“Yes, I heard that you have been in contact with them.”
“Oh really?” he asked, looking up eagerly. “How did you find out?”
“From the daughter of one of their members. A former member, to be precise. He was found dead shortly after using your Sound Conduit.”
“Oh. Yes.”
“You mean you knew about this?” I asked.
“Of course. The police came to speak with me last week. But I understand it was suicide, quite unrelated to my invention.”
“But he was not the only one,” I said.
Maxwell pulled on his coat. “Augustus, as I said to the police, the Aetheric Sound Conduit is simply a method of communication.” He picked up a box and handed it to me. “See?”
I held the device tentatively, expecting it to make some sort of noise or movement at any moment.
“The device is completely passive,” Maxwell continued. “I cannot be held responsible for what people may decide to do with it.”
“I am sure the inventor of the pistol said exactly the same thing,” I said.
Maxwell turned and glared at me. “Do not be obtuse. There is no similarity. None at all.”
“And yet five people are dead,” I said. “Does the apparent coincidence not bother you?”
“I think you have hit on the precise word,” he snapped. “Coincidence.” He sighed and then looked up at me. “I apologise. I am under some pressure at the moment; I am so close to finally getting significant recognition for my work. But you are convinced that there is a connection between these deaths and my Aetheric Sound Conduit?”
“The man, someone previously of sound mind, spoke with someone on your device and then a few minutes later was dead at his own hand. His daughter heard laughter on the other side. She said it put her in mind of children laughing.”
“Children laughing?” It was clear from his expression that he accorded this the same sinister weight as did I.
“Indeed,” I said. “It makes me wonder whether there is a connection with the events we encountered in the Pattersons’ house, the events that befell poor Milly Patterson.”
Maxwell frowned but did not discount my theory out of hand. “It is possible; after all, it was our encounter with the Aether in that house which led me to the principles which underpin the operation of the Aetheric Sound Conduit.”
We were disturbed by Kate stepping back into the room. “Your cab’s ’ere,” she said.
Maxwell nodded. “I must go, but we will continue this conversation later. I am meeting with the others who are testing the Sound Conduit prototypes; I shall retrieve them for further testing.”
Kate and I listened to him bang and clatter his way out of the house and then slam the front door shut.
“Thank you for letting me in earlier,” I said to her. “I hope I have not caused you to be in any trouble.”
She waved her hand. “He’ll be fine. We’re coming to a bit of an understanding, him and me. Anyway, I know he always has time for you.”
“Hmm,” I said, absently turning the Sound Conduit round in my hands.
“You really think them things’re dangerous?” she asked.
“That certainly seems to be the indication,” I said. “Although how or why, I am not quite sure.”
“Well,” she said. “I know he thinks he’s on to something big. Could make his fortune. And that Royal thingy—”
“Royal Society,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s them. Well it sounds like a big deal.”
“It is,” I said. “The Royal Society is the most prestigious gathering of scientists in the world. Max has been trying to get their attention for some time, with little result.”
“Looks like he managed it.”
I looked down at the device in my hand. “Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Have you seen N’yotsu of late?” It was a fair assumption: in recent days, my brother and he had been almost joined at the hips.
“He was here earlier but then went out on some sort of errand. Did say he’d be back later, but not sure when. Would you like to wait here for him? I can put on a pot of tea.”
“Do you have anything stronger?”
“Afraid not,” she said. “Maxwell’s got a knack for sniffing out the stuff. He threw out my last stash, and I can’t afford to keep losing that amount of money down the gutter.”
I smiled. “In which case, I shall be on my way. Could you let N’yotsu know that I would like to speak with him at his earliest convenience?”
It was only when I was almost home that I realised I was still holding the Sound Conduit, like a host blinded to the presence of a bloodsucking parasite. I cast aside such morbid thoughts and pressed on, now painfully aware of the device in my hands; whilst I wanted to return it to Maxwell’s laboratory as soon as possible, the day’s increasing cold meant that my desire to be inside somewhere warm was much stronger.
*
For a box sporting tubing and precious little else, the Aetheric Sound Conduit was an imposing presence in the corner of my sitting room. I poured myself a large glass of whisky and sat down in my battered old armchair, trying to fathom why I had brought the damned thing home with me.
Having carried the device across London, I had largely managed to overcome my earlier anxiety in relation to it. Its insubstantial weight further reduced my sense of dread, to the extent that I had almost forgotten that I had it. It was only when I placed it on the table that it reassumed a sinister presence in my mind, like a tiny man who adopts an air of importance when he is seated in an impressive chair.
I took a swig of whisky and picked up a book, forcing myself to focus on something else. Time and again, though, I found my eyes drawn back to the corner table and the ominous box.
“This is ridiculous,” I muttered. “It is only a box.” I stood, resolving to put the thing in a cupboard and return it to Maxwell at the earliest possible opportunity.
It started to ring.
The noise was insistent, demanding, and extremely irritating. The closest approximation which sprang to mind was that of a school bell which had been both speeded up and strangled. Clearly Maxwell’s lack of sensitivity in relation to design extended to the aural as well as the visual. “At least he is consistent,” I said to myself with a forced smile.
I stood, willing myself to go over and answer the thing, yet simultaneously forcing my body to remain where it was. The internal struggle was exhausting and I took another swig of whisky to fortify myself.
The Aetheric Sound Conduit and I remained in this battle of wills for a few minutes, whereupon the ringing stopped as abruptly as it had started. I took a long, deep breath and realised that my ha
nds were clenched tight. I relaxed them, wiped the sweat on my trousers and then picked up the whisky glass with a shaking hand and took a long, deep drink.
It started to ring again.
Fear gave way to irritation and then a form of fevered curiosity. I paced the floor, ostensibly to refill my glass but in fact to give my body something to do. “You will not stop until I pick you up, will you?” I said to the device.
It continued to ring.
My pacing took me past the Sound Conduit like a swinging pendulum, each time passing closer and closer. Whilst my instincts, every fibre of my being, screamed at me to resist the device’s siren call, there was another—just as insistent—part of me which urged surrender. I felt like a child who had been ordered to not touch something; the more I tried to fight the temptation, the greater was the urge to do the one thing I knew I should not do. Finally, on a whim and before I could think about what I was doing, I snatched up the two tubes and held them toward my face.
Mercifully, the ringing stopped.
A distant crackling sound emanated from one of the tubes and this was the one that I put to my ear.
“Augustus?” said a voice, familiar yet alien, through the tube.
I blinked and swallowed painfully through a dry throat. “M-mother?” I stammered.
“Hold the mouthpiece closer,” said the voice. “So that I can hear you clearer.”
Automatically, I moved the other tube closer to my mouth. “Is that better?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” she said. “Now, Augustus, my love, you must listen very carefully. I have been watching you.”
Somewhere in the recesses of my brain a sliver of reason kicked in. “Mother... but you’re dead.”
“‘You are dead’, not ‘you’re dead’,” she corrected me. “I did not raise you to talk like one of those gutter whores you spend your time with. Now listen and do not interrupt. I have been watching you. We all have been watching you. And we are deeply disappointed.”
I opened my mouth but no words came out.
“What exactly have you made of your life?” she asked. “What have you really done with that precious spark I gave you?”
My brain screamed at me to put the device down, but my body betrayed me. I remained rigid, unable or unwilling to stop the words which were torturing me.
“We brought you up to be so much more than this,” she said. “So much more. And you have let us down every step of the way.”
She was right. I could have achieved so much were it not for my own stubbornness and idiocy.
“We tried so hard to help you, to push you forwards. But you squandered everything.”
My mind flashed back to every time I had nearly achieved, nearly managed something, only to be let down by my own idiocy. A careless word here, a stupid gesture there; they all added up to a lifetime of chances which had passed me by.
“What is even the point?” my mother sighed. “Maxwell has done so well. But you...”
She was right. I could barely hold a candle to my brother’s achievements.
“Why do you even bother?” she said. “Why do you go to the effort of getting up every day, just to add even more disappointment and failure?”
I felt as though I were seven years old again, nervously shifting from one foot to another while my failings were paraded in front of me. Just like all those years ago my voice was paralysed by a lump in my throat and I felt the first pricks of tears in my eyes. She continued to berate me, every word another knife to my heart as my long-dead mother carved away at my ego. I was frozen, unable to do anything but listen and silently weep at my own uselessness.
“You always were the runt of the family,” continued the voice in my ear. “We all said so. I suppose the one mercy is that Father never lived to see what little you made of yourself. Although he sees everything from here. We all do.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks as the tirade continued.
“We gave you the best schooling, every chance imaginable, and what did you do? You threw it all away on some common girl. And you could not even save her. Pathetic. She is here as well, you know, and she shares our deep disappointment in you. Quite the lucky escape for her, in the end.”
This was the final straw, cutting to the root of all my anxieties and exposing them like a raw wound.
I let the Sound Conduit fall to the floor and walked away, unable and unwilling to focus on anything other than my misery. A bed sheet lay on the floor of the sitting room, discarded from an all-night drinking session a few days earlier. I took it into the hallway and mounted the stairs, winding and twisting the sheet until it resembled a rope. Dimly I was aware of my hands tying one end of the sheet around the bannister at the top of the stairs then fashioning the other end into a noose. My vision blurred with tears as I put my head through the noose and threw myself over the bannister.
CHAPTER 13
The hallway spun around me while I kicked my legs, my fingers scrabbling at the noose around my neck. The fugue which had urged me to commit suicide had been jolted away by my body’s innate sense of self-preservation. Unfortunately, this was too late to help me; the noose held fast.
My vision started to blur and dim, the room pulling away from me as my grave first beckoned and then wrenched me toward it.
An image appeared in front of me, a man in a top hat and tails. A dim part of my mind noted that I had always expected the Grim Reaper to be less well-dressed and more... bony.
The force round my neck slackened and I fell to my knees with a thump which jarred through my whole body. Fingers tore away the noose and I took a laboured, agonised gasp of breath through a throat which felt smaller than a pip. That breath was followed by others, each more painful than the last, but at least I was alive.
Ten minutes later I was sitting in my dining room, clutching a glass of brandy and shivering slightly. N’yotsu sat opposite me with a curious expression on his face.
“Thank you,” I rasped, my voice finally returning.
“There really is no need,” he said. “You are lucky I arrived when I did.”
I nodded. “How did you...” My words ended in a coughing fit which reminded me of my first over-eager experiences with tobacco.
“... Know you were in danger?” said N’yotsu. “I did not; it was pure fortune. Kate told me that you had visited and needed to speak to me, so I decided to come to you. I arrived to see you throwing yourself off your staircase and broke down your door to rescue you.”
Once again I was in his debt and expressed my gratitude in the only way I could: with a nod, a smile and an avalanche of coughing.
“I am, however, curious as to why you thought such an act was a good idea,” he said.
“I didn’t,” I croaked. “Or at least I shouldn’t. It was that new invention of Maxwell’s, the Aetheric Sound Conduit. It rang. I spoke to my mother. She... made me...”
“Why would speaking to your mother make you want to commit suicide?”
A thousand humorous quips flashed across my mind in spite of the situation, but I limited myself to: “I don’t know. But that’s not the strangest part.”
“You mean it is not unusual for your mother to want you to kill yourself?” said N’yotsu.
“No,” I said, every word an effort. “Please listen. My mother died over twenty years ago.”
“Interesting.” N’yotsu stood. “Where is the device?”
“Sitting room,” I croaked. N’yotsu walked out of the kitchen, in the direction I had indicated. After a moment of staring at the door, I followed him.
The device still lay on the floor where I had abandoned it, the tubular speaking and listening attachments spraying off from the box at odd angles. He picked it up and placed it on the table. He held the listening tube to his ear and then shrugged and replaced it in its cradle.
“Nothing?” I asked.
“That’s right,” he said. “No sound at all. You are certain that someone spoke to you?”
“Whatever my
brother may say, I am not always prone to drunken hallucinations. I was definitely lucid.”
N’yotsu grunted, but I saw him glance at the bottle of whisky which still stood near the device.
Something was bothering me, and I went back out to the hallway, where N’yotsu had found me. “N’yotsu,” I said. “You said you saw me throw myself off the stairway and this was what prompted you to rescue me.”
“That is correct,” he said.
“But how could you see me? The only windows are on the first floor. You would have had to have been on the roof opposite to see in.”
Before he could answer me, the Sound Conduit started to ring and N’yotsu started toward it.
“I really don’t think that’s a good...” I began, but he ignored me, picking up the listening tube and holding it to his ear.
I waited, watching his still back, loathe to approach lest I be somehow contaminated by the poison which was no doubt dripping out of the machine and into N’yotsu’s ear. I wondered what I would do to restrain him if he decided to try and kill himself; I had witnessed on several occasions the man’s preternatural strength and did not fancy my chances of restraining him. I looked around for something which I could use as a weapon to incapacitate him, but the only likely candidates were the whisky bottle and the sheet I had tried to hang myself with.
With a roar, N’yotsu slammed the earpiece down on the body of the device, driving a hole into it. It fell to the floor and he proceeded to stamp on it, all the time yelling wordlessly.
I approached him carefully and, steeling myself, put a hand on his shoulder. “I think you’ve taught it a lesson,” I said, looking down at the mess of wires, glass and metal spread across the floor.
His head snapped round to look at me and I recoiled at the expression of pure rage that I saw there. A fleeting glimpse of sorrow flashed across his eyes before he blinked and collapsed in on himself, his senses returning. He was breathing heavily, fists and jaw alike clenched hard.
