‘Now,’ Madame Sophia said in a stage whisper, ‘who shall we contact?’
Liz glanced at George. This was obviously a complete waste of time, but George was watching with interest and enthusiasm. There was no way to tell him that she, Liz, had orchestrated much of what had happened while the rest was simple stage trickery.
‘Albert Wilkes,’ George said. ‘We want to make contact with a gentleman who recently departed this life named Albert Wilkes.’
Madame Sophia smiled confidently. ‘And so we shall,’ she said. ‘Do you have any small thing, some personal possession or other that I may use to focus my communications.’
Liz sighed. Probably she wanted it to glean any clues about the dead person. Perhaps, since George had nothing that had belonged to Wilkes, this would soon be over.
But to Liz’s surprise and horror, George had taken out his wallet. He passed the scrap of paper from Glick’s diary carefully across the table to Madame Sophia. She inspected it somewhat dismissively.
‘It’s worth a try,’ George mouthed to Liz. She sighed.
‘I suppose this will have to do,’ she decided, and set it down on the table in front of her, next to the letter ‘A’. ‘Fingers on the glass,’ she instructed. She kept one of her hands pressed down on the fragment of paper. Her eyelids fluttered.
‘Don’t be disappointed if we fail to make contact,’ Gerald warned.
‘We won’t,’ Liz assured him.
But her words were drowned out by Madame Sophia’s sudden shriek. ‘He is here,’ she exclaimed in surprise and delight. ‘Albert Wilkes. His spirit is still in the land of the living. He is with us now!’
In the laboratory at the back of a large house, Albert Wilkes sat up. His movement was stiff, his eyes were unseeing pearl-like marbles.
‘The vocal cords have atrophied,’ the man standing beside the workbench said. ‘But he should still be able to write.’
‘We got no sense out of him last time, sir,’ Blade observed. ‘That was why we sent him off to the Museum for the diaries. Except he ignored us and went home instead.’
The other man was nodding. ‘I am aware of the problems. But despite Sir William’s meddling, I am optimistic. Now that we have a little more time, the bones have been properly replaced, and while they are not actually his own they will more than suffice. The brain has been subjected to an improved form of electrical stimulation which I hope will this time have shocked it into some semblance at least of sense as well as life. I need sentience as well as instinct.’
‘Speak to us,’ Madame Sophia intoned. ‘You are troubled, I can sense that. Do you have a message for anyone here? For Mr Smith perhaps? Anything?’
Beneath her fingers, Liz felt the glass tumbler tremble. She looked round at the others seated at the table. They all seemed equally surprised. Then the glass began to move.
‘A pen, sir?’ Blade offered. He was unable to take his eyes off the dead man.
‘If you please. Of course,’ his master went on as Blade took a pen from the desk and dipped it in an inkwell, ‘despite my best efforts, the brain may be damaged beyond the point of repair.’
‘He has been dead rather a long time, sir.’
The lifeless fingers closed coldly on the pen, and Blade suppressed a shudder. He placed a sheet of paper on the workbench under the poised, dead hand.
Liz was as sure as she could be that it was not movement caused deliberately by anyone there. The glass quivered and shook like a struck tuning fork. It circled slowly, as if trying to make up its mind which letter it wanted.
‘Yes?’ Madame Sophia hissed excitedly. ‘Yes? Tell us, please. What is your message, you poor tortured soul?’
‘Now, Mr Wilkes,’ the man said gently, ‘you are quite aware of what I want to know. Be so good as to write it down would you?’
Nothing. No flicker of understanding or tremor of movement from the corpse.
‘Write it down!’ the man shouted with a ferocity that made the windows rattle. ‘Or would you rather Blade returned you to the ground?’
Slowly, deliberately, the pen stroked at the paper.
The glass paused, then trembled again. It moved directly across the table towards George, stopping by the card imprinted with the letter ‘O’. It hesitated only a moment, then it moved again. Not far, just a few letters clockwise round the table: ‘R’.
Wilkes’s fragile hand continued to move slowly over the paper. His dead eyes did not look down. Another letter was slowly inked on the page.
Next was ‘I’. Liz could almost feel the tension in the room. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath.
‘O R I,’ Gerald said quietly. ‘What can it mean … Origin?’
‘Hush,’ Madame Sophia said, surprisingly gently. The glass trembled again.
‘Thank you.’ The man’s breath misted the cold night air. It didn’t do to mix warmth with death.
Blade waited for Wilkes to finish. Then he took the sheet of paper. He swallowed dryly when he saw what was on it. He handed it to his employer without comment.
Next was ‘M’. Liz’s throat was dry. It was just a trick, she kept telling herself. But both Gerald and Madame Sophia seemed as caught up in it as anyone. Just a trick — surely it was just a trick.
The glass moved again, heading for another letter.
The man stared at the paper for several moments, breathing deeply as he struggled to keep control. Five uneven characters were scratched into the paper. Ragged and useless:
O R I M O
‘Another O,’ George said out loud.
The glass stopped. It wasn’t trembling any more. The strange life it had taken on seemed to have deserted it again.
As if to confirm this, Madame Sophia let out a long, deep sigh. ‘He has gone,’ she announced. ‘He has left us. The link is broken.’ She lifted her hand from the table and carefully passed the scrap of paper back to George. But despite the disappointment of contact being lost, she was smiling.
He crushed the paper into a ball and hurled it across the laboratory. The man was trembling with anger, but when he spoke his voice was cold and controlled.
‘Dead too long, it seems. There is something lingering, but not enough. I think, Mr Blade, we shall have to try a different approach.’ He snapped his fingers impatiently. ‘Paper and pen. Quickly, man.’
Blade hurried to oblige. He took the pen from Wilkes, dipped it in the ink again, and returned it to the dead man’s grasp.
‘Not for him, you dolt! Give it to me.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I thought-’
‘You are not paid to think,’ Augustus Lorimore said, snatching the sheet of paper that Blade offered him. ‘Now leave me in peace for ten minutes. Then I will have a letter for you to deliver.’
Chapter 11
Madame Sophia seemed still in a daze. Mrs Paterson was pale and shocked, her husband blinked when the lights were relit, as if he had just woken up. Without ceremony, Husband Gerald ushered the Patersons to the door and out into the hall. Liz could hear him talking to them in a low voice — accepting their money or making an appointment for a further consultation no doubt.
‘The table,’ George said in disbelief. ‘That was incredible.’
‘Thank you,’ Liz said with a smile.
But before she could explain, Husband Gerald was back. He stood in the doorway, staring at Liz and George. He did not look happy, and he had undergone a transformation. No longer was he the dithering, ineffectual little man dancing to his wife’s instructions. To George, the man seemed bigger than before. His eyes were cold and hard.