Read Her Own Devices for Free Online Page A

knowledge?
     
     

Chapter 5
     
    Tigg managed to control his impatience long enough for her to climb out of the landau and join him at the door, but once inside, he bounded across the warehouse floor. Andrew had already arrived and was just removing the collar from the glass tube.
    “Did it work, sir?” he asked as Claire removed her duster.
    “You mustn’t expect anything to work the first time, Tigg,” Andrew said as Claire joined them. “Give me a hand with this, will you?”
    Together they set the tube on the floor and Andrew reached in for a handful of coal.
    “Looks ezackly the same as when we put it in, sir.”
    Andrew looked crestfallen. “You’re quite correct.” With a hammer, he tapped the coal and it broke into several pieces. “There is no difference. It is neither harder nor more brittle. It just ... is.” He sighed. “Well, such is the nature of science. I must turn my mind to a different approach, that’s all.”
    “What if the nature of the electricks is the trouble?” Claire asked from behind them.
    Andrew and Tigg turned, as if surprised to see her there. “The nature of them?” Andrew repeated.
    “Is there not a different kind of electrick you might apply? One that is ... stronger, perhaps?”
    “I’m afraid the City of London can’t supply anything stronger,” Andrew said. “In fact, along with the steam engine that powers it, I have a number of converters in the system of this chamber that would not be, er, approved by our good Commissioner of Works, because they increase the current to a point that is too dangerous for ordinary use. Hence the glass chamber. I do not want my laboratory burning down.”
    “Mr. Malvern ...” She stopped. She must tread carefully. “What might it mean if an electrick current were not yellow or green, but blue-white?”
    Tigg looked at her strangely, but to his credit, said not a word.
    “Where have you seen such a thing?” Andrew frowned at her in a most disconcerting way. “Even Mr. Tesla’s cells do not produce blue-white current. They are always yellow.”
    “But what would it mean?”
    “Why, it would mean a stronger concentration of power than any I’ve ever seen.”
    Strong enough to kill a man on contact.
    “In fact, I read a paper once about a device that could generate such a current, but the engineering was a cross between genius and fantasy. Even if such a device existed any longer, it would be so dangerous that no one could work with it for fear of being killed.”
    “It did exist at one time?”
    “It must have. One must submit one’s inventions to the Royal Society of Engineers and have them vetted in order to have one’s papers published.”
    “Do you know who might have written it?” A name would give her a place to start in mining his office for that paper.
    Andrew laughed. “I do, but it won’t do any of us any good. You heard me say it was a combination of fantasy and genius?”
    “The genius part might be interesting to us.”
    “There is a fine line between genius and madness in some people, I’m afraid. The author of this particular paper is no longer with us.”
    Claire’s shoulders wilted in disappointment. “He’s dead, then?”
    “She. And no, she’s not dead. She is in Bedlam.”
    “A scientist in Bedlam, sir? Insane?” Even Tigg sounded shocked.
    “I’m afraid so. She was committed years ago, when she attacked Sir George Longmont, the Chief Engineer, at a meeting of the Royal Society. I was not present—being still a schoolboy then—but the old-timers told me it was a horrific scene. She had been one of the very first women admitted to the Society, you see. When she was committed, it set the Wits back twenty years.”
    Claire suppressed a shudder. If the lady had been committed to the Bethlehem Royal Hospital years ago, it meant she was housed in the Incurable ward. Most people were cured and released in a year or less. Only the truly insane were locked away for their own good and that of