London, 1893
Outside the gently swirling flurries of snow blanketed the streets, but as the temporal bridge irised shut behind her, Roxanne Bonaventure found the bedroom on the third floor of the Bark Place house warm and inviting. It was the work of a few minutes to get a fire going behind the grate, which nudged the temperature up a few more degrees, and then it was out of her muddy traveling clothes and into some appropriate period garb.
It was just before dawn, Saturday, December 30, in that calm lull between Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. Roxanne had last been in the period a few months ago subjective time, enjoying Christmas in high Late Victorian style, and with the lingering holiday cheer in the air, intended to spend a few relaxing days in a more sedate age. She'd ring in the new year with old friends, catch up on some sleep, and then continue her travels down the branching worldlines of the Myriad.
Her fingers still somewhat numb from the frigid air of the ice age she'd just left, she found it a much more difficult task than normal to manage the fasteners and stays of the Victorian dress and boots. She'd just worked her way into the heavy fabric of the dress, the last latch in place, when there came a knock at the bedroom door.
Roxanne bristled for a brief instant, expecting trouble, before realizing who it must be. The only person it could be.
"Yes, Mrs. Pool," she called through the door. "What is it?"
Mrs. Pool, a stout working-class matron of the day, had been employed as the day maid at Number 9 Bark Place for the last five years, objective time. Five days a week she arrived precisely at dawn, and worked the house from roof to cellar until almost dusk. She was paid well, there was no question about that, her employer Miss Bonaventure paying at least three times the going wage. And so far as she was concerned, Miss Bonaventure was there every morning when she arrived, and there every evening when she left, provided she wasn't out on the town on some adventure or other.
Through the good graces of the Sofia's crystalline intelligence, Roxanne always maintained a strict schedule when visiting the period. In later eras, domestic staff were much more lax about their employers' habits, and thought nothing of a single woman who disappeared for days at a time. In the 1890s of Victoria's London, though, such things were still frowned upon, and Roxanne had learned from experience in earlier decades how disastrous the effects of her accustomed habits could be. In Victorian times, then, she lived as a Victorian woman, tailoring her sensibilities to their closest period-specific roles. This meant, in the most general sense, that she be seen to be a decent, upright citizen.
It was a matter of ease to accomplish, once she got the hang of it. She made a habit of leaving the period late at night, after Mrs. Pool had gone home for the day, and whenever she wanted to take a break and chose to return, she'd simply open a temporal bridge to the morning following her last visit. Though months or years might pass in her subjective time, to Mrs. Pool and the rest of Victorian London, she'd only been gone a matter of hours.
"A messenger with a card for you, miss," came the rough-hewn tones of Mrs. Pool through the sturdy oak door.
Roxanne, settling the dress on her frame, crossed the thick rug to the door, and turning the key in the lock swung it open on its hinges.
"Good morning, Mrs. Pool," Roxanne said warmly, her tone precise and practiced.
"Morning, miss," the day maid answered, smiling easily. She held out a calling card. "This come for you, just a few moments back."
"Thank you," Roxanne answered, taking the card.
The front was featureless, flat white and unmarked, but on the back were written five words, in a precise hand, as regular as if they'd been typeset.
"MISS BONAVENTURE, WE ARE NEEDED"
"Will you be wanting breakfast, miss?" Mrs. Pool asked. It was hardly counted among the standard duties of a day maid to act as cook as well, under normal circumstances, but given her salary the older woman never hesitated to offer.
"No, thank you, Mrs. Pool," Roxanne answered. "I'm afraid I may be busier than I expected." The streets of London were far too cold and snow covered for Roxanne to use her bicycle, as was her usual habit. Instead, she flagged down a hansom cab outside her front door, and climbing in instructed the driver to take her to Number 31, York Place, Marylebone, just a dozen or so block to the north and east. To the home of Sandford Blank, consulting detective.
The ride, which in the late Twentieth century could have been accomplished in little more than two minutes, barring traffic, took closer to a quarter of an hour through the snow and slush, but the extended duration gave Roxanne a chance to better reacquaint herself with the rhythms of the period. She'd first set up shop in the late 1880s in her mid-twenties, subjective time, largely out of a desire to see firsthand the world of Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, and Robert Louis Stevenson. It was while at the Saint Anthony Academy that she'd developed an early passion for Victorian fiction and history. When a short while later she discovered the nature and workings of the Sofia, one of her first thoughts was that she'd have the rare opportunity to visit the places of her imaginings in person. As was so often the case, though, the realities of the situation proved far different than she could ever have dreamed in her fantasies.
It was after a year or two of objective time, around the beginning of the 1890s, that she first came into contact with Sandford Blank, and suddenly faint slivers of her childhood fantasy began to encroach on reality. Blank was like something from a Victorian penny dreadful, a figure of pulp fiction made real. That he was one of the most impressive individuals Roxanne had ever encountered, in any era or worldline, only tended to add to his mystery.
A slow half-smile crept across her lips as the cab approached the curb in front of Number 31 York Place, and tipping the driver handsomely she stepped gingerly down into the slush and muck of the snow covered street. She had covered only half the distance between the curb and the house when the front door swung open violently, a tall gray figure in a bowler hat stalking out into the still faint morning light. In one hand he carried a silver-topped cane, in the other a rolled up newspaper.
"Splendid, Miss Bonaventure," the man declaimed, crossing the distance to the hansom cab in a few long strides, slapping the newspaper against his leg. "You've hired us a cab. Come along now, don't dawdle. We've got some distance to cover before we're through."
He threw open the cab's door with a flourish, and then waved Roxanne back in.
"Good morning, Blank," Roxanne answered with a smile, miming a quick curtsey before mounting the step on the cab's side. "And how are you today?"
"No time for idle banter, my dear," Blank answered, climbing in after her. "There's business in Richmond, and we've been called up to look into it."
"Business? What sort of business?"
"Our sort of business, Miss Bonaventure," Blank replied, allowing himself a tight smile. "Strange business." Blank called out an address in Richmond, a suburb just to the south of the city, and then settled back in his seat for the long ride. He was dressed in his typical gray, suitcoat, waistcoat, trousers and hat all a uniform shade, his only concession to the inclement weather being a gray topcoat tossed over the ensemble. As they rode along the bumpy roads, he slapped periodically at his knee with the rolled up paper, face already screwed tight in fierce concentration.
"And where, if I might ask, are we bound?" Roxanne asked, molding her speech patterns as near as possible to the period norm. So far as Sandford and her other Victorian associates were concerned, she was one of the New Women, a precursor to the liberated Twentieth century feminists, but still and all there were limits to how far beyond the standard roles she'd be allowed to wander.
"To the home of a Simon Travaille," Blank answered, "a scientist of some repute and an expert in the subject of physical optics."
"And do I take it, by your firm grip on the thing, that this periodical has something to do with the matter at hand?" She indicated the rolled newspaper in his grip.
"No, I'm sure you'll learn all you'll need to assist me when we arrive, Miss Bonaventure," Blank answered. "This... this obscenity..." he smacked the paper against his knee more forcefully in way of punctuation, "is only another in a continuing series of slanderous attacks upon my person."
"Oh, I must say I'm intrigued." Roxanne reached out, and pried the newspaper from his hands. After wrestling it from his grasp, she unrolled it, and saw that it was the sixth issue of something called The Halfpenny Marvel. "May I ask what this humble little penny dreadful contains that has so set your nerves on fire?"
"This!" Blank fairly shouted, and reaching over tore the paper open to one of the inner pages. There, beneath a crude drawing of a man in a bowler hat, was a story entitled "The Missing Millionaire."
"Do you see?" Blank went on. "I've only just now coerced Doyle to leave off writing that damned parody of me he's been peddling these last few years, and now this jackanape's come along to fill the void, not two weeks later."
"'Sexton Blake'," Roxanne said in admiring tones, reading aloud the name of the principle character. She recognized it immediately, and stifled a laugh. She didn't even have the heart to tell Blank about Doyle's decision to revive the other character, years later. "Oh, this sounds intriguing."
"Damnation," Blank glowered. "At least Doyle had the good grace to learn the details of my cases before bowdlerizing them beyond recognition. This feckless hooligan hasn't even the decency to do that, but cuts pure fiction from whole cloth, and steals some small degree of credibility by attaching it to my reputation."
"Well, Blank, it hardly says 'The Adventures of Sandford Blank,' now does it?"
"Oh, a child could recognize the similarities," Blank shot back.
"My dear fellow," Roxanne answered, "if you asked me, I'd say that a child himself was the author, if the mangled syntax and style is any indication."
"Ppth," Blank sputtered, his customary sound when he considered a conversation at an end.
Roxanne, grinning devilishly, spent the rest of the ride reading aloud from the paper, dramatically acting out all of the roles, paying special attention to the part of the bowler-wearing consulting detective. Blank sneered in silence, pretending to be fixated by the snowflakes drifting slowly to the ground outside the hansom cab's fogged windows. "Mr. Caruthers?" Blank asked when the slight, bald-headed man answered the door. The house was fairly impressive, one of the grander in a respectable neighborhood. The impression of the interior beyond the open door was one of warmth, comfort, and above all wealth.
"Yes," the little old man at the door answered, uncertain. By his manner and dress, he was a servant of some stripe, a valet or butler.
"I am Sandford Blank," Blank replied, introducing himself. From the pocket of his waistcoat, he drew out a calling card, white and featureless on both sides. "My card," he said, handing it to the man.
The servant, Caruthers, took the card with a confused look on his face, but after looking from it to Blank and back momentarily, the confusion melted, to be replaced by an expression of understanding and trust.
It was a talent that Roxanne had seen Blank use any number of times. He'd spent some time in the Orient in his youth, it was rumored, which would account both for his abilities with the martial arts, and for his trusted retainer and manservant Quong Ti. His experiences in the Far East, though, it was sometimes suggested, gave Blank a great many more advantages than was normally assumed. He had the odd talent of being largely forgettable; that is, anyone who spent any amount of time with Blank, after a short absence following, tended to find themselves unable to recall any distinguishing details about his appearance. They could describe him only in the most general of terms, remembering that he was tall, well-muscled, and favored gray in his choice of dress, but could not recall the shape of his nose, or the curve of his chin, or the quality of his voice. Likewise, on first meeting him, after initial suspicion or confusion most tended to accept his word as golden, and to answer any question put to them. That he had no official credentials, despite the frequency with which the police, the Crown and others relied on his abilities, did not seem to affect the valuation strangers placed on his authority. Whether these qualities or abilities were the result of some sort of Oriental mesmerism, neither Roxanne nor anyone else could say for certain.
"Are you with the police?" Caruthers asked, stepping forward and motioning Blank and Roxanne to enter. "I've already spoken with the man from Scotland Yard last night."
"No, Mr. Caruthers, I'm not with the Yard," Blank replied, shaking the snow from his top coat and gliding past the servant down the hall, Roxanne in his train. "Though on many occasions, such as this one, I'm called upon to assist in unusual cases. This is my associate, Miss Roxanne Bonaventure."
"Pleased to meet you," Caruthers said automatically, bowing slightly to Roxanne before closing the door behind them. "This way, please," he added, leading them into the smoking room.
"Is a Simon Travaille in at the moment?" Roxanne asked, taking a seat on the divan in the smoking room and trying to work out exactly why they had come.
"No, miss," Caruthers replied, taken aback. "Mr. Travaille isn't here at all."
"And where is he, then?" Blank asked, as though he knew the answer.
"That's just the trouble, sir," Caruthers answered. "Just like I told the man from the police. Mr. Travaille has just flat disappeared, and I think I know who done it."
"Mr. Caruthers," Blank said, arranging himself on a high-backed chair, "do please sit down while we talk. Having you hovering over me like that is making me nervous."
Caruthers' eyes widened, and he looked from Blank to the available chairs nervously. It was obvious he'd never sat down in the room before, and Roxanne wasn't sure if the idea had ever even occurred to him to try.
Slowly, Caruthers inched over towards a stool, the most uninviting and uncomfortable-looking offering in the room.
"That's it," Blank urged, waving his hand up and down before him. "You can do it."
Holding his breath momentarily, Caruthers allowed his hindquarters to close the remaining gap to the stool's surface, and with a sigh of relief was off his feet.
"Splendid," Blank said, applauding softly. "Now, if you could just recount for us the events of the last twenty-four hours, just as you did for the police, hopefully we can be of some assistance."
Caruthers nodded deliberately, and began his tale.
It seemed that his employer, Simon Travaille, was something of an eccentric, to put it kindly. Forever working on some strange project or other, or else playing some elaborate hoax on his friends, Travaille, it appeared, had always been something of a trial for his loyal retainer Caruthers. Over the course of the last months, however, things had taken a strange turn, with Travaille spending more and more time in the seclusion of the laboratory he'd had constructed at the rear of the house, hardly visiting the rest of the house at all. The only exception to this self-enforced hermitage was the weekly gathering of writers, editors, scientists and gadflies that assembled at the Richmond home every successive Thursday. The cook, Miss Trent, typically earned her week's wages in that single night, preparing food for anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen hungry gentlemen, as opposed to the boiled eggs and toast of which Travaille usually demanded his menu consist.
This Thursday past, December 28th, Caruthers had seen Travaille retreat into his laboratory in the early morning hours, remaining in seclusion there until well after his Thursday night guests had gathered in the smoking room. Caruthers had thought nothing of it, his employer's habits having a tendency to shift and alter as the months and years passed.
Thursday night progressed as it always did, the laughter and smoky voices of Travaille and his guests drifting back to Caruthers at his post in the kitchen, whiling away the hours in the delightful company of Miss Trent. Finally, the guests departed, and Travaille had returned to his laboratory.
The following morning, Friday, a frequent guest of Travaille's weekly gatherings appeared at the door. A writer of some kind, Caruthers thought, the man seemed agitated about something, and demanded to see Travaille at once. Caruthers, thinking little of it, showed the man to the smoking room, and then went back to inform his employer that a guest had arrived. Travaille responded to the knock on his locked laboratory door with a muffled shout, and answered that he'd be out in a moment. Caruthers returned to the smoking room, informed the guest that Travaille would be only a moment, and then returned to his duties.
A short time later, Caruthers heard his employer exit the laboratory, join the guest in the smoking room, and then could hear the two men talking in low but heated tones. After about a quarter of an hour, by Caruthers' reckoning, he was upstairs tending to his employer's wardrobe when he heard the rattle of the laboratory door being slammed. After another quarter of an hour or so, Caruthers went back downstairs, and found the guest in the act of exiting the front door.
The guest seemed flustered, his gaze darting back and forth guiltily, and after a prolonged and awkward silence he turned back and rushed up to Caruthers.
"Has your employer come out this way?" the guest asked, or something to that effect, Caruthers reported.
Caruthers replied that no, so far as he knew, Travaille had neither left by the front door, the only exit now that the laboratory had been built over the rear of the house, nor had he come up to the first floor. Likewise, Caruthers assured the guest, there was no exit from the laboratory itself, save back into the house, the only windows being too narrow and high for any easy exit.
"He must have disappeared," the guest replied briskly, or so Caruthers recalled, and then hurried from the house, leaving Caruthers behind in an empty house with a mystery. In the hour that followed, Caruthers searched the house top to bottom, as well as the surrounding grounds, and found no sign of Travaille. He did, however, find Travaille's camera missing, as well as several small objects of some value which had always been kept in visible locations in the smoking room.
"And it is your impression, Mr. Caruthers," Blank asked, summarizing, "that this guest had some hand in the untimely disappearance of your employer Travaille?"
"Yes, sir," Caruthers answered, nodding slowly. "Yes, it is."
"And this gentleman's name?" Roxanne asked.
"Something like... West, perhaps?" Caruthers answered. He thought for a moment, his wrinkled face distorted with concentration. "No, Wells, that's it," he finally added, triumphant. "H.G. Wells."
Roxanne's breath caught in her throat, and Blank only smiled a knowing smile. Flagging down another hansom cab, the pair of investigators turned south again, heading even farther from the inviting warmth of their homes at the city's center. Blank provided the driver an address in Sutton, some considerable distance from London proper.
Roxanne had to bite her lip to keep from saying too much to Blank too soon. She cherished her association with the man too much to reveal the nature of her existence to him at this point, and was sure any untoward revelation about knowledge of future events would certainly hamper their relationship. Instead, as she so often did, she allowed him to steer the course of their discussions.
"You seemed to recognize the name of this Wells fellow," she asked, leading. "You wore that same queer smile you so often do when you hold cards the other players haven't seen."
"Too true, Miss Bonaventure," Blank answered with a smile. "I had the bulk of Caruthers' story from a contact at Scotland Yard late last night, and made some inquiries as to the habits and character of this man Wells. He's a writer of some stripe, having penned two textbooks published this past year, as well as a string of articles on a variety of topics, most for the Pall Mall Gazette. A short visit to the offices of the Gazette this morning revealed that Wells lives in Sutton, with his wife Isabel. I thought we might call on him there, and see how he responds to Caruthers' charges."
"Seems perfectly reasonable," Roxanne answered.
"Naturally," Blank smiled.
The scene at the Wells' household in Sutton, when they arrived, was hardly what they might have expected. In the lingering afternoon sun, no lights were seen burning in the windows of the house, and no smoke curling up from the chimney. Knocking repeatedly at the door, Blank was stymied when no one answered, and in his exasperation took to shouting through the door and into the windows, demanding to know whether anyone was in.
It was the neighbors who finally answered. The man who appeared on the front steps of the house adjacent, put out at having his evening meal interrupted, curtly informed Blank and Roxanne that the Wellses had quit their Sutton home and moved on.
Blank pressed the man for more information, peppering him with questions until more details were forthcoming.
Finally, with the aid of the neighbor's well-informed wife, the over-the-garden-wall gossip seeming to travel faster than telegraph, Blank and Roxanne were informed that the Wellses had indeed moved on, but to separate locales. The Mrs. Wells, tearful and with regret, had gone on to Hampstead, to stay with relations, while the Mr. Wells had flounced off to London alone. Continuously helpful, the neighbor wife even had a forwarding address for Mr. Wells in London, in the events that any parcels or post arrived for him at the Sutton address before the post office had updated their records.
Blank thanked the two neighbors profusely, and with a spring in his step he and Roxanne again climbed into the hansom cab and began the long ride back into London. That evening, returning late to town, Sandford and Roxanne enjoyed a relaxing dinner at his York Place home, and then whiled away the evening chatting in his first floor sitting room. Near midnight, Roxanne returned home to Bark Place, and after pushing all thoughts of the possible crimes of the young Mr. Wells from her mind, settled in for a long, refreshing slumber beneath heavy down quilts.
The next morning, the sun sparkling on the nightfallen snow, Sandford and Roxanne convened at his Marylebone residence, and set off at a stroll to Number 7 Mornington Place, just a few blocks away.
Arriving at the steps of the building, a lesser light in a barely respectable district, Blank knocked forcefully on the frail wooden door, tapping the foot of his cane on the ground. When a young woman answered the door, he was startled, and stepped back to check again the number over the eaves.
"I'm terribly sorry," Blank said, doffing his hat. "I'm afraid I was misinformed. I was looking for a Mr. Herbert G. Wells?"
The young woman, perhaps not yet in her twenties, chewed nervously at her lip for a moment before answering. From the flat beyond the door, Blank and Roxanne could hear the sound of voices raised in agitation, male and female, and of feet stomping back and forth.
"Yes," the woman finally answered in a quiet voice. "Bertie lives here. He lives here with me," she added, apparently trying for a more forceful and determined tone.
"Really?" Blank asked, his voice liquid and running. "And who might you be?"
"I might ask you the same," the woman replied, placing her hands on her hips. "A stranger who arrives uninvited at my door, asking questions."
Looking close, Roxanne thought that the redness around the woman's eyes suggested recent tears, but couldn't be sure.
"How terribly rude of me," Blank replied, and produced one of his cards. In less than a minute, he'd won the young woman over to his side, as he'd done with so many others in the past.
The woman, introducing herself, was a Miss Amy Catherine Robbins, a former student of the former teacher Wells, with whom she was reportedly in love. Wells, Catherine was quick to add, had left his wife Isabel behind to live with her in the city, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop them.
"Oh, my dear," Blank assured her, "we wouldn't dream of interfering with the course of true love. Is there any chance that Mr. Wells is here at the moment?"
Blank craned his head around, trying to see beyond Catherine into the flat. The tumult within seemed to have intensified, escalating to a chorus of voices shouting after Catherine to return, and asking who was at the door.
"No," she said, shaking her head sadly. She paused, and with apprehension added, "But he'll be back shortly."
"Splendid," Blank sang, and taking Catherine by the arm slipped past her and led her back down the hallway into the flat. "Then we can wait for him together. Oh, look at my manners. Miss Robbins, this is my associate Miss Bonaventure." By this point, he'd dragged the somewhat dazed and unresisting Catherine well out of reach of the door. "Miss Bonaventure, if you'd be so good as to close the door."
Roxanne nodded with a smile, and following him in closed the door behind her. The commotion within the flat proved to be something of an impromptu family reunion in progress. Besides the young Miss Robbins, there was her mother, the respectable widow Mrs. Robbins, up from Putney, who'd brought along with her a ragged assortment of a half-dozen male Robbins relatives, all with a singular purpose. It appeared that the decision of the young Miss Robbins to take up housing with the still quite married Mr. Wells was not a popular one among the Robbins family, and the present contingent had assembled on the home at 7 Mornington Place to make their feelings on the matter clear.
Of the assembled, Mrs. Robbins was by far the most outspoken.
"It just isn't right, Mr. Blank," she explained, once Blank had worked his peculiar introductory mesmerism on her. "She's too fine a lady to be mixed up with the likes of him, and what future is there in it, I ask you? Why, I have it on good authority that after seeing to the financial affairs of his poor, betrayed wife, Mrs. Wells, that this Wells character has no more than one hundred pounds in the bank. Not a pfennig or farthing more."
"And what good authority would that be, Mrs. Robbins?" Blank asked.
"Why, that of the bank manager himself, whose first cousin is married to a Robbins, my own nephew."
"That would certainly seem a reliable source," Roxanne put in.
"Quite," Blank said.
"And at the top of it all," the Widow Robbins continued, her tone growing ever more dramatic, "now he's in some sort of trouble with the law. Oh, Catherine, you just can't stay in this den of iniquity, you simply can't. Come home with me to Putney, finish up your schooling, and find yourself a respectable gentleman."
"Yes, Catherine," came a ragged chorus from the assembled Robbins men. "We'll see to your dear 'Bertie,'" one chimed in, menacingly.
"You don't understand," Catherine pleaded, walking the fine wall separating tears and rage. "None of you do. Bertie has grand plans, he's told me. And we won't have to worry about money a bit."
Blank smiled, his attention piqued.
"Grand plans, are they?" he asked. "Have you any idea what those might be?"
"What's all this about?" came a new voice from behind Sandford, and the focus of the room's attention shifted away from Catherine to the newcomer.
Roxanne turned, and saw him there. He was more or less the man she'd seen in so many photos back in school, but with subtle differences. The longish mustaches were there, and the precisely parted hair, as well as the tweeds and a ratty scarf; but his cheeks were more sunken than they'd be later in life, his eyes darting and timid. This was a man setting the first footfalls on the road his life would follow, unsure where the path would lead, and not the more assured man of later years who'd look back on his career and accomplishments with pride.
"Oh, Bertie," Catherine swooned, and rushed to his side.
"Mr. Wells, I presume," Blank said, miming a bow from the neck up.
"Come on, boys," one of the Robbins men said, and stepped forward to lead his brothers and cousins in the charge.
Roxanne bristled. She was sure that Blank's pugilistic skills were equal to the challenge of six angry men, as were her own for that matter, but this was hardly the sort of Victorian civility she'd come to expect of the era, and hardly the relaxation for which she'd hoped.
"Now, then, gentlemen," Sandford cautioned, stepping between the advancing Robbins men and the hapless and wan Wells tensing defensively in the entryway. "There's no reason for things to take an ugly turn."
"I don't know, Blank," Roxanne said with a smile, sizing up the Robbins in the lead. "I'd say that they already had, from the looks of him."
The lead Robbins snarled, and balling his hand into a fist cocked his arm back for a blow.
Blank casually thumbed the silver handle of his cane, which came loose from the wooden shaft, sliding up to reveal an inch of wicked steel within.
"Now, now, Blank," Roxanne said, stepping in front of him. "I hardly think it's quite as dire as all that."
The lead Robbins, his momentum already carrying him forward, looked aghast at the thought that the blow intended for Blank might land instead on this flower of Victorian womanhood. He needn't have worried. The man's fist just inches from her face, Roxanne sidestepped, ducking the blow, and drove a tight fist into the soft flesh of the man's armpit. The Robbins man, squealing in pain, doubled over, collapsing onto the hard and dusty floor.
"See," Roxanne called back over her shoulder, "it just requires the delicate touch of a woman's hand."
"In the rubric of comparative strengths of pens, swords, and hands," Blank answered, stepping forward to stand at her side, and drawing the full length of his sword-cane from its wooden concealment, "I will chose the sword in virtually every case."
The five Robbins men still standing looked from their moaning brother to the pair of investigators watching them casually, and drifted back to the corners of the room with practiced casualness. Mrs. Robbins, aghast equally at the boorish behavior of her kinsman on the floor, and the startling behavior of Mr. Blank and Miss Bonaventure, could only gape, mouthing wordlessly.
"I think, at this juncture," Blank announced, punctuating the remark with a flourish of his sword-cane, "that matters could best be handled with smaller numbers."
"I agree," Roxanne answered in a sing-song voice.
"Any objections?" Blank asked, his glance surveying the room, taking in the pair of young lovers cowering by the door, the bewildered and enraged widow, the man still moaning on the floor, and the five men ranged around the walls. "Splendid. Then I suggest we remove all unnecessary elements from the conversation, so as to more quickly pierce," he gestured again with the blade, "the heart of the matter."
Blank turned to Mrs. Robbins, and in a courtly maneuver offered her his arm.
"Mrs. Robbins, it has been a distinct pleasure making your acquaintance, but I think it best we part company at this point. Gentlemen," he called over his shoulder, leading the Widow Robbins to the door, "if you'll follow me?"
In less than a minute more, only Blank, Roxanne, "Bertie," and Catherine were left in the flat, the Robbinses gone and the door locked firmly behind them.
"Now then, Mr. Wells," Blank said, turning on the younger man. "To business, and strange business at that." "I admit it," Wells confessed, when the question had scarcely been put to him. "I did steal some trinkets and baubles from Simon's home, as well as a mineralogical sample of some interest. But I tell you I had nothing at all to do with his disappearance."
"Do you credit it, Miss Bonaventure?" Blank asked, his gaze fixed on the young writer. "A man confesses to one crime to prove himself innocent of another."
"Stranger things have happened," Roxanne answered warily. She was unsure either way, of Wells' innocence or guilt.
"I'm sure they have," Blank answered casually, "but not frequently." He brushed his pants legs straight, and sat up in his rickety chair. "Very well, let's start with the simple facts. Mr. Wells, you admit to stealing valued items from the home of a man you count among your closest friends. Why?"
Wells swallowed hard, and shot a longing glance at the young woman sitting by his side.
"As I'm sure you know," the young writer finally began, in serious tones, "Catherine and I are just starting out together, and financial compensation for my writing assignments is hardly what one might call exorbitant. As Mrs. Robbins told you, after seeing to my wife Mrs. Wells' needs, I was left very little capital with which to begin our new life, and when faced with the opportunity to supplement my income with a few minor items from Simon's home, I couldn't resist the temptation." He paused, averting his eyes, and added, "Besides, I hardly think Simon will miss them, considering where he's gone."
"Well now, that has certain ominous overtones, don't you think?" Blank asked jauntily. "And where, if I might ask, has Mr. Travaille gone, in your opinion?"
Wells rubbed at his lower lip with an ink-stained finger, considering his answer. He looked to Catherine, who with large eyes looked back only with love and support. Finally, swallowing a few times in preparation and taking a deep breath, Wells continued.
"To the past, one assumes," Wells answered. "Or the future. One of the two, it hardly matters which."
Roxanne looked on wide-eyed. She'd suspected as much from the beginning, but could hardly credit the suspicion. It was simply too unbelievable.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Wells," Blank said, "I may not be as clever as the next man. I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to clarify that."
Wells began to rise to his feet, and Blank jumped off his chair first, gripping his sheathed sword-cane firmly. Wells sank back onto his seat, frightened.
"I only wanted to show you," Wells began. "That is, I can explain... It's all to do with that mineralogical sample I told you about. You'll see."
Blank considered the matter for a long moment, and then nodded.
Wells climbed to his feet, and under Blank's careful watch retrieved a valise from the sparsely furnished bedroom adjoining the sitting room. Returning to his seat, Wells opened the valise on his lap, and withdrew a half-dozen or so small valuables, the booty of his impromptu raid on Travaille's home. Finally, he drew out a small object, wrapped in a cloth handkerchief embroidered with the initials "HGW."
"This," Wells explained, carefully unwrapping the handerkerchief to reveal what seemed a small hunk of quartz, "is chronium. It is the element of time."
Blank reached out his hand, demanding the small sample. Reluctantly, Wells handed it over. Once Blank had inspected it the object was handed over to Roxanne. She looked at it closely, and had the Sofia scan it for any radiation or unusual qualities. To her surprise, she found that the Sofia could barely register the existence of the object, and was completely unable to identify it.
"Simon told me," Wells continued, "that he'd recovered this from a meteorite that fell in Horsell Common south of London some years past, and that he had spent the years since investigating the strange properties of the material. He claimed, and I could scarcely believe it at first myself, that when an electrical charge was sent through the element, that it rotated into the fourth dimension, leaving the normal flow of time behind."
"The fourth dimension?" Roxanne asked, trying to recall the status of higher dimensional theory in this era.
"I recall a series of books and papers on the subject by Charles Hinton," Blank said distractedly. "But do you mean to tell me that this stuff, this little bit of sparkle, will travel in time with the application of electricity?"
"That was Simon's contention," Wells answered, his attitude resolute, "and several experiments which he carried out in my presence convinced me of the theory's validity. It was this strange temporal quality of the stuff that led him to term it 'chronium,' after the Latin..."
"Yes, yes," Blank said interrupting, waving him silent, "I'm sure that none of us requires a lesson in linguistics at this point. What experiments, precisely, did Mr. Travaille perform which convinced you of his claims?"
Wells took another deep breath, and straightened up defensively.
"Travaille constructed a Time Machine, a vehicle for traveling backwards and forwards in time at will."
Roxanne was baffled, and fairly enraged. It was all faintly ridiculous, the idea that Wells, whom she'd so admired since childhood, would pass off his fictional notion of a time machine to excuse some potentially horrible crime, perhaps even murder, or worse. She narrowed her eyes, glaring daggers at the young man, biting her lip to remain silent.
"That is, you must admit," Blank said in measured tones, "a difficult concept to accept."
Wells laughed, nervously.
"Oh, I assure you," the young writer answered, shaking his head, "I felt exactly as you when Simon first told me. It wasn't until he showed me the effect in action that I believed him."
"Showed you?" Roxanne blurted out, almost shouting.
"I share my associate's concern," Blank added. "How did he show you?"
"By sending a sample of the chronium forward in time, or back, he wasn't exactly sure which." Wells paused. "He used the bulk of his supply in the construction of his time machine, using two rods as control mechanisms, one for traveling forward, the other for traveling back. This little bit was the only piece left over from the construction."
"I think we've heard enough..." Blank began, and started to rise to his feet.
"Wait, wait," Wells pleaded, his eyes welling. "If I proved to you that the chronium can in fact move freely in time, you would have to believe that I had nothing to do with Simon's disappearance, right?"
Blank nodded, reluctantly.
"Wait here," Wells shouted, and leapt to his feet. He rushed back to the small bedroom, and returned with a small mechanical device, all wrought iron and gears, with a handle on one side and a pair of copper wires trailing from the other.
"This is a portable electrical generator which Simon gave me some years past," Wells explained. "He used it to effect any number of hoaxes on his Thursday night guests, but had no use for it when he procured a larger and more efficient model. If you'll allow me..." He set the portable generator on the floor, and reaching forward snatched the piece of quartz-like material from Roxanne's grasp. Without further preamble, he carefully wrapped the first of the copper wires around one end of the object, the second around the other. Then, setting the wrapped object in full view on the bare floor, he knelt down beside the generator, taking the crank handle in hand.
"Watch carefully," Wells instructed his disbelieving audience, his young lover included. "It will begin to fade slightly, and then will disappear from view entirely as it rotates ana or kata into the fourth dimension."
"Ana? Kata?" Blank repeated.
"I'll explain later," Roxanne assured him, her nineteenth-century theoretical mathematics and physics coming back to her.
"Watch it, now," Wells shouted, cranking the generator's handle faster and faster, the noise of the machine reaching a crescendo as it went.
"This is ridiculous," Roxanne muttered. Wells was obviously well-informed on the current theories, but this little sideshow was beneath him, surely. What could he hope to gain?
Before Roxanne's disbelieving gaze, there was a quick spark, and a snap, and then the quartz material of the "chronium" did indeed appear to fade, becoming slightly more transparent, the grain of the wood floor visible through it. Roxanne's eyes opened wide, and she leaned in for a closer look.
Suddenly, there was a popping sound, and the wire-wrapped object simply vanished from view. The two copper wires fell flat on the ground, severed as cleanly as if by a pair of shears.
"There," Wells said, out of breath and jumping to his feet with a look of triumphant zeal in his eyes. "I told you. It has traveled somewhere in time, to history past or futurity unknown."
Roxanne goggled, and could think of nothing to say.
"In that case," Blank answered casually, rising to his feet, "I think we're done. We'll leave you in peace, Mr. Wells, Miss Robbins. Come along, Miss Bonaventure," he said, strolling towards the door. "Our work here is through."
Roxanne trailed after, her mouth hanging open. That night over dinner Roxanne kept quiet, in silent communion with the Sofia. She pinged it again and again for anything it might have registered about the disappearance of the "chronium," but it came up empty with every iteration. She racked her brain trying to work out how Wells might have hoaxed the thing.
"Why, Miss Bonaventure," Blank finally said, breaking the silence, "I believe you've hardly touched your soup. It'll have gone cold by now, you know."
"Sandford," Roxanne said, using his Christian name in an odd flash of familiarity, "I must admit that I'm baffled. You can't possibly believe that Wells caused that little bit of rock to travel in time, can you?"
Blank smiled back at her.
"Roxanne," Blank answered, sounding back her familiar tone, "as I've told you time and again, there is an explanation for everything that happens in this world of ours, a theory which best fits the available facts. Yes?"
Roxanne nodded, reluctantly. When she'd first heard the nineteenth-century consulting detective so closely echo her own father, she'd been amazed.
"Well, in that case, the theory which best fits the available facts, all of the available facts, is that Simon Travaille did in fact master the science of traveling in time, and that Mr. Wells, while admittedly a thief, was innocent of any wrongdoing surrounding Travaille's disappearance. No other theory comes close to working so neatly as that."
Roxanne glowered, unwilling to accept something so obviously wrong. Chronium couldn't possibly exist, she knew, because no era or worldline she'd ever visited had ever seen such a thing, and the chances were astronomical against such a thing occurring only in one branch of the Myriad. Only the Sofia, she realized, met that standard. And herself. That brought her up short.
"After all," Blank added, interrupting her train of thought, "I'm sure Wells will make some good of this." He uncorked a bottle of wine, and poured them each a glass.
"There's no reason to prosecute for the theft," Blank went on, "since Travaille has no estate to press any charges, but perhaps Wells has walked away from this experience with more than he imagines. Who knows? Perhaps in a few years, Wells will write his own account of this strange business, and make something of a name for himself." He paused, and raised his glass in a salute.
Roxanne looked sidelong at Blank, wondering for the thousandth time just how much he suspected about her life, and just who he had been before they'd met.
"Who knows indeed," Roxanne answered, raising her own glass in response. "Stranger things have happened."