It was Mountcastle who had discovered this Miss O’Brien and arranged for her to attend this interview, and Dr Williams was aware that Mountcastle had an infuriating habit of being right. If he said that the girl was intelligent, competent and diligent, it would undoubtedly be true and, given the theories Dr Williams was beginning to develop regarding the superiority of the fairer sex as test subjects, the presence of a young woman in the tests would undoubtedly prove beneficial insofar as reassuring the ladies that his intentions were purely scientific. Miss O’Brien had apparently become embroiled in some scandal or other with respect to Farkas, the Hungarian fool who barely merited the title of Professor, but had left his office without a stain on her name or a backward glance, at which point some fate had brought her to Mountcastle's notice and thence to Dr Williams.
“Well, we shall have to see how well we work together,” he said, having made the decision to hire her almost instantly. “Perhaps you would like to come and see the laboratory? I have a Reichian cabinet, which I am in the process of modifying. The results so far have been unsatisfactory, but I believe that there is a problem with the size of the accumulator itself. I have ordered some cogwheels of a smaller diameter, but they have yet to arrive...”
Following him down the cellar stairs, Eileen O’Brien found that she needed do no more than murmur appreciatively from time to time as the young doctor continued with his explanations. She had managed not to snort with derision at the mention of a Reichian cabinet - such a device would have probably been superseded by the helmet Professor Farkas had begun the prototype of, had the silly old man not allowed his enthusiasm to make him reckless about his claims for a potential new power source. Calling upon the senior professors to witness the success of his new device had been reasonable enough, but attempting to demonstrate its effectiveness by terrifying and enraging them had been profoundly unwise. Eileen believed that the unfortunate consequences of the final experiment might still have been averted. If only Farkas had listened to her advice on choosing a more impressive alternative, instead of a partially-dismembered clockwork monkey, to demonstrate that the particles generated by an intensity of feeling in the human mind could be harvested, stored and utilised to drive machinery.
In fact, Dr Williams’ cabinet was less of a disappointment than Eileen had expected. He appeared to have a comprehensive understanding of the discoveries that had so far been made in the field, and had embarked on some significant changes to the original design. He had concentrated the glass panels, with their mesh of copper wires, on the upper part of the cabinet walls, and the brass siphons he had used were much smaller. However, the cabinet’s seat was still of the rigidly upright sort, with minimal padding, and the wrist straps and chest harness seemed, to Eileen’s eyes, unnecessarily severe.
“Regarding the experimental subjects, Dr Williams,” she said, choosing her words with caution. “How do you select them? It has been my understanding so far that some types have higher potential than others.”
He turned a quizzical eye on her. “I have so far been obliged to make do with either those who support a scientific endeavour or those who are in such need of financial assistance that they are prepared to subject themselves to all manner of bizarre procedures. In some cases, anger is more productive than fear, which I believe may offer us a moral lesson of some description as well as representing a degree of progress...”
Eileen, knowing what she knew about the suitability of subjects, maintained a deferential silence for the present. She still recalled one of the final experiments Farkas had undertaken. The subject had been a dignified lady of means who had been persuaded to don the Farkas Helmet and allow herself to be repeatedly startled by means of sudden loud noises - several of the helmet’s tiny crystals had been illuminated in the course of the procedure. Farkas had been so impressed that he had asked the lady to participate in a second experiment, along with a woman of the streets; the two of them obliged to turn and turn about within the adapted cabinet and wearing the helmet. Farkas, influenced by the idea that the lower orders were naturally more spontaneous and uninhibited, had been surprised to see that far more satisfactory emanations were produced by the aristocrat.
Dr Williams was still talking, but had moved on to excoriating a Dr Burke, who had apparently claimed to be able to produce impressive results by means of inflicting pain on subjects, but only on some of the unfortunates who submitted to his process. Dr Williams was of the opinion that the sooner Burke was unmasked as a fraud or compelled to cease his experimentation on ethical grounds, the better. Eileen, unfamiliar with the name of Burke, nevertheless remembered something she had overheard her allegedly wicked aunt, Mrs Chescott, saying to her mother some months previously; that pain was sometimes more than simple physical suffering, but only for particular individuals. “Some, they say, can learn to love the whip,” she had cried, and Eileen’s mother had sounded both intrigued and concerned as she entreated her sister to talk of something pleasanter before Mr O’Brien returned home. Alone in her room that night, Eileen found her thoughts returning to Mrs Chescott's remarks in a way that both disturbed and delighted her.
***
Kensington, 1919
Roger Williams lay in his bed, unable to sleep. His mind was filled with images of Lady Isidore; her perfect features, the glowing red of her hair, cropped fashionably short - and the cold fury in her eyes when she spoke of her great-aunt. He was aware that his grandfather, the inventor of Williams Carnality-Pulsation technology, had employed a Miss O’Brien as his assistant. Yet family lore had never implied that Dr Williams’ treatment of the girl had been anything other than gentlemanly, so he simply could not understand the reasons behind Lady Isodore’s behaviour. He looked up at the great glass panels, wrapped in their mesh of copper wire, an arrangement of small crystals at the centre of each, which were fixed at an angle above his bed, and counted the Williams cells in their brass cages, alternating with the siphons: most appeared to be partially-charged, but at least two were dull and lifeless. He reached for the polished wooden handle set in the bed’s headboard, and pushed it up until he felt it engage. After half a dozen turns, he heard the soft hum which indicated that the Pulsation Accumulator was active and, closing his eyes, began to touch himself. In his imagination, Isidore stood before him, but her lovely face was no longer hostile. She unlaced her flying leathers and he could see that her nipples were erect beneath the flimsy chemise which was all she wore underneath. He wrapped his fingers round his straining member, caressing and squeezing as he pictured himself embracing her, bending his head to suck and bite those proud little buds through the delicate fabric. He thought of her lying beneath him, raking his back with sharp fingernails as she drew him inside her; he threw the bedclothes aside as he thrust more urgently into his own fist. “Isidore!” He groaned aloud at the moment of release, and opened his eyes to see sparks flying across the Accumulator’s panels, and the rack of Williams cells all flaring into bright, fully-charged life.
***
Southwark, 1885
Dr Williams laboratory was dark and silent, the good doctor having retired to his rest or, rather, to the comforting warmth of the Turk’s Head, two streets away. The silence and the darkness were barely disturbed as Eileen O’Brien slipped delicately in through the rear door, with only a small brass lantern as her guide. She was aware that dismissal might be the consequences of her actions, but her impatience with the doctor and the intransigence of so many similar men of science would allow her to delay no longer. She had tried, on more than one occasion, to persuade Dr Williams to consider the acquisition of one of Granville Mortimer’s devices for the treatment of hysteria, citing both the theories attributed to the Hungarian and an anonymous monograph in “New Discoveries” entitled “Hysteria and the Life Force.” He had declared them interesting but surely irrelevant, and instructed her to continue collating the results on subjects provoked to fear and anger. In fact, both theo
ry and monograph were mostly, if not entirely, Eileen’s own work, but claiming them as such would ensure they were disregarded as womanish nonsense.
She had considered, briefly, suggesting to Dr Williams that she be provided with her own key to the laboratory’s back entrance. However having worked in his employ for several weeks, she felt entirely able to conjecture that the doctor would agree that a key should be cut and given to her, that it was an excellent idea for her to be able to enter the laboratory in the evening or remain there after the day’s experimental work had concluded, in order to organise her notes, but agreement would be as far as it went. The doctor was, at least, free from prurience or that queer, furious nervousness that some men of his ilk seemed to suffer at the mere proximity of a woman. Yet so preoccupied was he with his experiments that she knew he would graciously give his consent to obtaining a key for her, and then forget all about arranging for the task to be done.
So Eileen had stolen the key from the pocket of his frock coat and, under the pretext of fetching some hot soup from the cookshop on the opposite side of the street, had visited the ironmongery and had a duplicate key created. Before replacing Dr Williams’ own key from whence she had conveniently discovered it. Now, with no one likely to see any sign of her presence so late at night, Eileen was going to conduct an experiment of her own.
Eileen had never suffered from hysteria, but her aunt had told her something of the hysterical paroxysm, and explained that it was nothing to fear, that it could be induced by manual stimulation and even enjoyed, as long as a girl maintained the correct frame of mind throughout. Mrs Chescott had covertly supplied her niece with copies of some of the more scandalous novellas of her own youth, most with discreet bindings and some with false ones which suggested that the text within consisted of religious homilies rather than the forbidden writings that truly filled the pages.
Eileen set the lantern on the workbench adjacent to the Reichian cabinet and settled herself inside it. She had been obliged, since beginning her employment with Dr Williams, to revise her opinion of his work in one respect - the modifications he had made to this assemblage did appear to have some advantages over the helmet Professor Farkas had been developing. Then she remembered that the key which needed to be turned seven times to activate the cabinet’s accumulator mechanism was inaccessible from inside the thing and sighed in vexation. Perhaps there was still greater potential in some variety of helmet, after all. Getting up again, she went to the rear of the cabinet, turned the key and, on hearing the machinery begin to hum, resumed her seat and hitched up her skirt and petticoat. Before leaving her lodgings, she had removed her satin bloomers on the grounds that they would get in the way; she had only a short distance to walk and no need to take a tram or climb any staircases, so no one would have any opportunity to detect this brazen omission.
The most recent gift from Mrs Chescott had arrived only days ago. Carefully packaged in several layers of brown paper, the box containing the item had a letter from aunt to niece attached to its lid, with instructions to read it carefully before proceeding any further.
“These new massagers are the Very Thing,” Mrs Chescott had written. “My dear Eileen, their usefulness in bringing about the hysterical paroxysm is barely to be believed. And you know, dear girl, that regular massage is the very key to a healthy mind in a healthy body, but one often struggles to find the time...”
Eileen had been intrigued by the device, and put it to use that very evening. She found that her aunt, as usual, had been quite right in her recommendations, and now she intended to let the Taylor Patent Vibrator assist her in testing the bold and possibly scandalous theory she had evolved regarding the most effective form of stimulus for a test subject.
Leaning back against the inadequately padded seat, she positioned the Vibrator carefully, setting the rounded head of it between the parted lips of her sex, which were already moistening. She closed her eyes, and endeavoured to recall the details of the books her aunt had supplied her with, but found instead that her imagination was inclined to present her with an image of Dr Williams, returning unexpectedly to the laboratory and surprising her in such a very compromising position. For all his arrogant certainty that he knew better than she how the desired results should be brought about, he treated her with unfailing courtesy and, from time to time, she thought she had detected something of admiration in his eyes; admiration for her as a woman, not simply an assistant she would have to admit, were she to be entirely honest with herself, that she admired the doctor in return. She decided to allow her imagination free rein- it could do no harm, and so she pictured him standing before her, his eyes wide and his lips parted. Her vision however did not progress to what would have been the likeliest conclusion- her dismissal and possible arrest for lewd conduct. No, indeed; as Eileen cranked the handle of the Vibrator and surrendered herself to its powerful motion, she envisaged Dr Williams joining her in the cabinet, restraining her with the straps she had, in reality, left unfastened, and ordering her to proceed without delay. She could almost feel his firm hands holding her down even as he berated her for wantonness. Would the experiment succeed or fail? And how would the doctor punish her for attempting it in the first place? Eileen cried out, thrusting the Taylor device deeper inside herself and drumming her feet on the floor as the paroxysm overtook her with unusual intensity and speed.
Some minutes later, Eileen got to her feet. She replaced the Vibrator in her bag, and retrieved a fine cotton handkerchief with which she mopped her face. Then, with some trepidation, she made her way to the rear of the cabinet and examined the two large crystals in their metal frames. Both were illuminated, emitting a faint but steady glow of light.
***
Kensington, 1919
As with many young men from wealthy families, Roger Williams was unaccustomed to questioning the way things were. That his grandfather had expanded on and adapted research pioneered by others before achieving the breakthrough that enabled him to patent Carnality-Pulsation energy cells was known and understood. Young Williams was at least lightly familiar with the names of Farkas and the disgraced Burke, and would agree, if pressed, that either of those men could easily have been the ones to discover a truly efficient method of harvesting those invisible particles emitted by the majority of human minds subject to strength of feeling. He would even concede that Farkas had been very close to a similar breakthrough in terms of understanding that the most powerful energies were involved with the moment of erotic release. Yet Lady Isidore seemed to imply that Eileen O’Brien had contributed considerably more to the invention of the process commonly known as Williams Power than was reported. Was it possible that her role in the experiments had been rather more than ancillary? If it was so, what could be done about it after so much time had elapsed? Eileen O’Brien was surely dead by now, as dead as Dr Richard Williams himself.
Yet, as the days passed by, he found himself returning again and again to Lady Isidore’s furious claim that Eileen O’Brien had been cheated and betrayed, and that this was the reason she would never allow herself to be courted by a Williams. The solution, then, must be to explore the veracity of her claim and, having discovered the truth, to share it with her. He would begin, he resolved, by seeking out the trunk containing his grandfather’s papers.
***
Southwark, 1885
On arrival at the laboratory the morning after her clandestine experiment, Eileen found Dr Williams in a state of some agitation. He was pacing around and around the Reichian cabinet, shaking his head and muttering to himself.
“Dr Williams, whatever is the matter?” she asked, hearing her voice tremble slightly. He barely glanced in her direction.
“Impossible... no earthly explanation for it... really cannot consider requesting assistance from a Theosophist...”
A little hesitantly, Eileen moved towards him, endeavouring to see for herself the source of his concern. At least t
here was no indication that she had betrayed herself in some unmistakeable way, she thought.
“Please, Doctor, what has happened?” she said, as beguilingly as she dared. Dr Williams sighed heavily, but he did halt in his pacing, and the look he tendered her was despairing rather than any kind of a threat.
“The crystals, Eileen,” he said. “The crystals are glowing. They are charged. Or they have charged themselves in some manner. Yet it shouldn’t be possible for this to happen without the presence of a test subject, unless my calculations are entirely flawed, and those of the confounded Theosophists are right in that there is a supernatural dimension to this business. I fear the entirety of our work could be compromised unless I can discover how this should have come to pass.”
He retrieved a high wooden stool from beneath the workbench, sat down upon it and buried his face in his hands. Eileen remained where she was, not daring to move. The doctor’s obvious anguish filled her with guilt and shame, yet she was equally conscious of a thrilling excitement at the news that the crystals had not simply been made to glow, but had retained the energy she had poured into them for several hours. She had been right, after all! Of all the strong passions, the carnal one was the most powerful.
Now she must make Dr Williams understand this, rather than allow him to torture himself any further. She licked her lips, ran her hands down the silky stuff of her black and white skirt and said, “Doctor, I believe I can explain.”
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