Amelia said: “You could demonstrate, Sir William.”
He made no answer, but instead sat back in his chair. He was staring at the strange device, a thoughtful expression on his face. He maintained this posture for five minutes, and for all the awareness he showed of Amelia and me, we might not have existed. Once he leaned forward, and closely scrutinized the device. At this I made to say something, but Amelia signed to me and I subsided into silence. Sir William raised the device in his hand, and held it up against the daylight from the window. He reached forward to touch the silver cog-wheel, then hesitated and set down the device again. Once more he sat back in his chair and regarded his invention with great concentration.
This time he was still for nearly ten minutes, and I began to grow restless, fearing that Amelia and I were a disturbance to him.
Finally, he leaned forward and replaced the device in its case. He stood up.
“You must pardon me, Mr Turnbull,” he said. “I have just been stricken with the possibility of a minor modification.”
“Do you wish me to leave, sir?”
“Not at all, not at all.”
He seized the wooden box, then hastened from the room, The door slammed behind him.
I glanced at Amelia and she smiled, immediately lifting the tension that had marked the last few minutes.
“Is he coming back?” I said.
“I shouldn’t think so. The last time he acted like this, he locked himself in his laboratory, and no one except Mrs Watchets saw him for four days.”
ii
Amelia summoned Hillyer, and the manservant went around the room, lighting the lamps. Although the sun was still up, it was now behind the trees that grew around the house, and shadows were creeping on. Mrs Watchets came in to clear away the tea-things. I realized that I had drunk only half of my cup, and swallowed the rest quickly. I was thirsty from the bicycling expedition.
I said, when we were alone: “Is he mad?”
Amelia made no answer, but appeared to be listening. She signalled that I should be silent . . and then about five seconds later the door burst open yet again, and Sir William was there, wearing a topcoat.
“Amelia, I am going up to London. Hillyer can take me in the carriage.”
“Will you be back in time for dinner?”
“No … I shall be out all evening. I’ll sleep at my club tonight” He turned to me. “Inadvertently, Turnbull, my conversation with you has generated an idea. I thank you, sir.”
He rushed out of the room as abruptly as he had entered, and soon we heard the sound of his voice in the hall. A few minutes later we heard a horse and carriage on the gravelled driveway.
Amelia went to the window, and watched as the manservant drove the carriage away, then returned to her seat.
She said: “No, Sir William is not mad.”
“But he behaves like a madman.”
“Perhaps that is how it seems. I believe he is a genius; the two are not wholly dissimilar.”
“Do you understand his theory?”
“I can grasp most of it. The fact that you didn’t follow it, Edward, is no reflection on your own intellect. Sir William is himself so familiar with it that when explaining it to others he omits much of it. Also, you are a stranger to him, and he is rarely at ease unless surrounded by those he knows. He has a group of acquaintances from the Linnaean—his club in London—and they are the only people to whom I have ever heard him speak naturally and fluently.”
“Then perhaps I should not have asked him.”
“No, it is his obsession; had you not expressed an interest, he would have volunteered his theory. Everyone about him has to bear it. Even Mrs Watchets has heard him out twice.”
“Does she understand it?”
“I think not,” said Amelia, smiling.
“Then I shall not expect clarification from her. You will have to explain.”
“There isn’t much I can say. Sir William has built a Time Machine. It has been tested, and I have been present during some of the tests, and the results have been conclusive. He has not said so as yet, but I suspect that he is planning an expedition into futurity.”
I smiled a little, and covered my mouth with my hand.
Amelia said: “Sir William is in perfect earnest.”
“Yes… but I cannot see a man of his physique entering a device so small.”
“What you have seen is only a working model. He has a full-sized version.” Unexpectedly, she laughed. “You don’t think I meant the model he showed you?”
“Yes, I did.”
When Amelia laughed she looked most beautiful, and I did not mind having misunderstood.
But large or small, I cannot believe such a Machine is possible!” I said.
“Then you may see it for yourself. It is only a dozen yards from where you are sitting.”
I jumped to my feet. “Where is it?”
“In Sir William’s laboratory.” Amelia seemed to have been infected with my enthusiasm, for she too had left her seat with great alacrity. “I’ll show you.”
iii
We left the smoking-room by the door which Sir William had used, and walked along a passage to what was clearly a newly constructed door. This led directly into the laboratory, which was, I now realized, the glass-covered annexe which had been built between the two wings of the house.
I do not know what I had been expecting the laboratory to be like, but my first impression was that it bore a considerable resemblance to the milling-shop of an engineering works I had once visited.
Along the ceiling, to one side, was a steam-lathe which, by the means of several adjustable leather straps, provided motive power to the many pieces of engineering equipment I saw ranged along a huge bench beneath it. Several of these were metal-turning lathes, and there was also a sheet-metal stamp, a presser, some acetylene welding equipment, two massive vices and any number of assorted tools scattered about. The floor was liberally spread with the shavings and fragments of metals removed in the processes, and in many parts of the laboratory were what appeared to be long-abandoned pieces of cut or turned metal.
“Sir William does much of the engineering himself,” said Amelia, “but occasionally he is obliged to contract out for certain items. I was in Skipton on one of these errands when I met you.”
“Where is the Time Machine?” I said.
“You are standing beside it.”
I realized with a start that what I had taken at first to be another collection of discarded metals did, in fact, have a coherent scheme to it. I saw now that it bore a certain resemblance to the model he had shown me, but whereas that had had the perfection of miniaturism, this by its very size appeared to be more crude.
In fact, however, as soon as I bent to examine it I saw that every single constituent part had been turned and polished until it shone as new.
The Time Machine was some seven or eight feet in length, and four or five feet in width. At its highest point it stood about six feet from the floor, but as its construction had been strictly functional, perhaps a description in terms of overall dimension is misleading. For much of its length the Time Machine was standing only three feet high, and in the form of a skeletal metal frame.
All its working parts were visible… and here my description becomes vague of necessity. What I saw was a repetition in-extremis of the mysterious substances I had earlier that day seen in Sir William’s bicycles and flying machine: in other words, much of what was apparently visible was rendered invisible by the eye-deceiving crystalline substance. This encased thousands of fine wires and rods, and much as I peered at the mechanism from many different angles, I was unable to learn very much.