Innocent Bystander

by C. A. Asbrey

  Jake fixed him with eyes dancing with amusement. “Where is she? Let’s get her out of here before it gets too late.”

  “Not a minute too soon for me,” snorted Gary. “And don’t be tryin’ to bring her back, neither. Me and Ben’ll be outta here like a robber’s dog the second she’s gone. I ain’t takin’ the risk of you changin’ your mind.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t. Is Ben briefed? Tell him not to stand so I can shoot over his head.”

  “Sure.” The bushy head nodded. “I took him to the theater to get an idea what villains are like. I enjoy a show. He’s been practicin’ and everythin’, but I told him the main thing was to have fun with it. Explore the character and let it flow.”

  Jake’s mouth firmed to prevent the smile tugging at his lips from going any further. “Yeah, right. Let’s go, huh?”

  ♦◊♦

  Gary and his stepson sat around the fire as the dusk started to gather into murky darkness while Madeleine lowered her head and sniffed back the tears she was unable to wipe from her ever-reddening eyes.

  She paid absolutely no attention to the cracking twig which made her captors dart knowing looks between them and certainly attached no importance to them stiffening in readiness for the show which was about to unfold.

  “Hands up. Keep ’em where I can see them.”

  Both men started to their feet, their hands raised, as Jake Conroy walked into the campsite. He quickly took in the girl, gagged with her hands bound behind her, as he shot a look of genuine shock at the large, bearded man next to her. “Why the hell have you got her like that?”

  “None of your business, stranger. Just leave us be.”

  “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  She snuffled as she fixed him with enormous, luminous eyes which split the difference between anger and anxiety. This man’s voice was familiar. Who was he, and what did he want with her?

  Jake brandished his gun. “Step away from her. I’m takin’ her out of here.”

  “Over my dead body,” Gary snarled like a henchman in a melodrama.

  Both her captors pulled out their guns as Jake fired. The bullets landed harmlessly in the undergrowth, but Madeleine was too panicked to process this. In terror, she watched the men fall heavily to the ground. The younger man had been waiting for this moment and played his part to the full, rolling into a ball, gasping, and gripping his unmarked abdomen. His face was more constipated-marionette than agonized-reprobate, but he was certainly having fun with it. A little too much fun.

  Gary threw a warning look at the lad, urging him to calm down and stop hamming it up as Jake stepped over the writhing boy and took hold of Madeleine’s right elbow, helping her to her feet. “You’re safe now. Come with me.”

  Jake led her from the glade and pulled the gag from her plush, generous lips. He gazed deep into the amazing depths of her frightened eyes.

  “Are you alright?” he whispered with real concern, feeling her tremble beneath his guiding hand.

  “What do you want? Don’t hurt me. I won’t tell anyone anything. Please—” her voice broke into a sob as she shook her head. “Just no. Please. Don’t—”

  Jake’s gentle smile lit his face. “Ma’am, I ain’t gonna hurt you. I rescued you.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name’s Jake. I was huntin’ around here when I saw they’d got you.”

  “What are you going to do with me?” she sniffed.

  He leaned behind her and started fumbling with the knots of her bonds. “Why’d they tie you up? Surely, they could handle you without that?”

  “They’re hateful brutes. You didn’t answer me, what are you going to do to me?”

  Jake loosened the ropes and released her hands, gently massaging them to make sure her circulation returned. He stared into her eyes with a soft smile. “I’m gonna take you home, darlin’. And I’m gonna make sure you’re safe. Where do you live?”

  Madeleine fixed him with an appraising gaze, unsure as to whether or not she could believe him. “My name is Mrs. Bartholemew. Madeleine Bartholemew. I live in one of the new houses on South Street in town. My husband will reward you for taking me back.”

  “You’re married?”

  “Yes. I married only a month or so ago. He’ll be missing me desperately.” She paused, her chest rising and falling in fear. “What do you want?”

  “For what?”

  “To let me go,” she gave a little sniff of fear as her eyes widened. “What do I have to do?” Her head dropped and she began to cry, her cheeks alight with tears.

  His heart sank, consciously folding his arms to make sure that she understood he was not about to make a grab for her. “Darlin’, you don’t have to do a thing. You don’t have to pay anythin’. I’ll take you home and I’ll keep you safe. That’s it. Nuthin’ else.”

  Her amber head tilted up until she faced him, drinking in the latent physical power of the man in front of her. “I can’t trust you.”

  Was it his imagination, or was there something about her tone which sounded slightly disappointed?

  “Of course you can. Come with me. I’ll get you back to safety.” A brown-gloved hand took her elbow as he led her to a horse, hoping she wouldn’t think to question why a man was hunting in this countryside with a spare horse which was just the right size for her and no rifle. Abigail would never buy any of this.

  “I’m just gonna take you to safety and let you go, ma’am. You don’t need to do a thing. You’re safe now. Relax. I’m here to help you.”

  ♦◊♦

  David Batholemew examined the maid’s jiggling backside as she knelt in the hall, scrubbing the tiled floor with vigor, the apron strings standing out as white flashes against her black dress. Her derriere was tight and pert enough, but when she turned around? What a face.

  Bridget’s hollowed eyes, sallow skin, and faint mustache put him in mind of a witch, and the sow bristles on her weak chin did little to soften her appearance. The single eyebrow extended over both eyes and when she smiled she displayed a set of yellow teeth which squinted and crowded her mouth like an array of miniature tusks.

  Bartholemew had little enough time for women as it was, but he certainly did not deal with repulsive ones. They were useful as playthings, ornaments, or for procreation. Maybe a few of the less decorative ones were handy for menial tasks like cooking, cleaning, and childcare. It freed men up for more useful pursuits. Why nature created hideous women was beyond him. He’d read Darwin’s Origins of the Species and found a lot to agree with, but why weren’t the ugly bred out?

  Women didn’t think, not in the way that men did. They seemed to have noises that ran around in their heads rather than true logic, and they lacked the masculine sense of perspective. They saw the size of the complaint as more pertinent than the size of the problem. At least, hideous men accomplished useful things in the world, but why nature kept creating beastly women was one of life’s mysteries. Who bred with them?

  He was a man of science and the fact that they had measurably smaller brains provided him with enough empirical evidence to support his hypothesis that they were the less-intelligent sex, and therefore the less-useful sex.

  It had been good of their regular maid to provide her cousin’s services as cover while she took time to recover from a fall from a horse, but why did she have to pick such a repugnant one? He was in more need of the light relief of a pretty face than ever since his wife had simply up and disappeared on him. Where had she gone? Had she decided that married life was not for her and run back to her mother?

  Well, good riddance, if she had. He’d soon find another. Madeleine was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but as soon as she opened her mouth— What a shallow, self-obsessed child! He had never intended that she should be around to bother him for very long, but she had been so beautiful that he had toyed with the idea of trying for a child with this one. Surely, the mixture of his brains and her looks would be an intoxicating combination for a worthy heir?r />
  But that was never to be. Not only had she disappeared, but he had quickly decided that he couldn’t cope with her demanding prattle, and if she had stuck around, she would have been dead by now. He wasn’t a nostalgic man. It was time to look around for her replacement. Funds were starting to run low.

  Abigail raised her head as the doorbell rang, seeing the shadowy figure of a man through the stained glass pattern of the twin panes set into the heavy front door.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to answer it?” Bartholemew’s brow creased and he glowered at the maid.

  “Yes, sir,” she replied in her thick Irish brogue. Abigail climbed up from the wet floor, wiping the perspiration from her forehead while being careful not to dislodge anything which formed her disguise.

  It had been fortunate that the maid had been so easily bribed to stay away from work, but then why wouldn’t she? The girl had at least a month off work for the price of six months earnings. She would have been mad to insist on coming to work for far less money, and would probably never see as much money as that all together at one time in her whole life.

  Bright sunlight streamed in through the door as Abigail opened it to Nat Quinn, resplendent in a crisp white shirt and smartly pressed suit.

  “Aah, Roberts. Good of you to come. I’ve been looking forward to your visit,” said Bartholemew. Nat strode forward, his face dimpling in welcome. He shook the hand of the blue-eyed, square-framed, mousey man with a prominent roman nose. Bartholemew was smaller than Quinn at about five-foot-eight, but his lack of height was more than compensated for by his lofty, intellectual arrogance.

  “Good to see you again.” Nat completely ignored the homely woman who had opened the door to him as he proffered a hand. “Are you sure you want to show me around your laboratory? I really don’t know much about radio waves. I only started to read about them the other day to find out more.”

  Bartholemew smiled. “Well it’s not often I sit beside someone in the park who pulls out An Elementary Book on Electricity and Magnetism and their Applications. I had to speak to you. I rarely get the chance to explain my work to anyone with an interest, let alone someone who has taken the time to become more informed.”

  Nat’s cheeks dimpled. “To find an expert in the field is wonderful. I admit to being just a little bit worried about being able to keep up with you.”

  “Everyone has to learn.” Bartholemew turned to the maid. “Bridget. We require some refreshments. What would you like?”

  Nat darted a glance at Abigail. “Coffee?” he asked with a questioning smile.

  “Certainly, sir,” she murmured with a slight curtsy, which amused Nat mightily. If only he could get that kind of respect from her all the time.

  ♦◊♦

  The men entered the large room, which would probably have been used as a grand dining room in any other home, but the surfaces were scattered with apparently random tubes, wires, glass containers and mysteriously complex appliances exuding coils and metal plates.

  “So, Mr. Roberts, how much have you learnt so far? I only ask so that I can explain in a way that doesn’t go over your head.”

  Nat cast shamefaced eyes to the ground. “Not much, really.”

  Bartholemew smiled reassuringly. “No need to be ashamed. You’re clearly a very intelligent man, and it’s that enquiring mind of yours which drew you in to a new area. Everyone’s a neophyte in a subject at some time or another.”

  Nat threw him a smile of relief.

  “Let’s start with the basics, shall we?” Bartholemew walked over to a blackboard and began scrawling on it in chalk. “Wireless telegraphy is an exciting new area. I’m not surprised that you were drawn to it. It’s something of an obsession of mine, and it’s the future. I foresee a world where messages will be sent around the world, floating imperceptivity in the air. Can you imagine news being sent in an instant to anyone with a receiver? Descriptions of criminals can be cascaded everywhere in a matter of seconds. Great minds can converse without distance getting in the way.”

  Nat’s brows raised. “Yeah, it’s just a pity they can’t send pictures that way. I could see life getting real hard for the dishonest.”

  “Oh, they can already do that by wire. It was invented by a Scotsman in eighteen forty-three. They’re all over Europe. They haven’t caught on over here.”

  “They are?” Nat gulped.

  “Yes, but you are right. We might be able to send codes which can be transposed into a picture in a similar way. I knew you were clever. I never even thought about that.”

  “Great,” Nat mumbled. “Glad to help.”

  Bartholemew continued with his lesson. “In eighteen twenty, a man called Hans Christian Oersted found that a wire conducting electricity could move the needle of a compass without direct contact. I’m sure you’ve read of his work. That meant there was an invisible field involved.” Bartholemew paused and smirked. “Invisible to the naked eye, that is.”

  “You can see it using some kind of aid?” asked Nat. “I’ve read everything I can on this subject over the last week. It intrigues me enough to dig deeper. I think I’m just starting to scratch the surface.” He cast out a hand at the apparatus. “You’re an expert. The more I know, the more I understand how little I know. I hope you don’t mind me picking your brains. I can see how this can become an obsession.”

  “Do you have any background in the sciences?”

  Nat nodded. “A little. I’ve studied physics and a little chemistry. Nothing in your league, though.”

  Bartholemew gave a nod of acknowledgement. “Then you’ll understand that Oersted established that there was a relationship between electricity and magnetism. More importantly, his work showed there was a force that didn’t seem to need any kind of wire for it to be transmitted from one place to another.” The man’s eyes glowed with enthusiasm for his subject matter as he continued. “We’ve experimented with different mediums to transmit signals without wires; capacitive coupling, magnetic waves, electrical conduction, but it was the work of a man called James Clerk Maxwell which really made all the difference. He built on the work of men like Faraday and Ampère to extend the mathematical formulation into a linked set of differential equations which were later re-expressed in quaternion and vector-based notations. Are you with me so far? Just speak up if you don’t understand.”

  Nat’s poker face was a distinct advantage in convincing the man that he was not only with him, he was urging him along as Bartholemew continued.

  “Of course, as you know, these equations have been vital in helping us to understand the behavior of magnetic and electrical fields and their interaction with matter. He also showed the complementary aspects of electromagnetism. He demonstrated that they were able to travel through empty space in the form of waves at a constant velocity of 3.0 × 108 meters per second.” The chalk clicked rapidly over the blackboard as he scrawled an equation. “What a mind. He even realized that light, radiant heat, and other radiations are electromagnetic disturbances which exist in the form of waves propagated through the electromagnetic field. Radio waves are produced when the electric field rapidly changes. There has to be an alternating current.”

  “So,” Nat replied, “there are invisible waves all around us, going through us, and we can’t even feel them?”

  “Not exactly. Light is a wave—that’s not invisible, once it hits the eye—although, it is not visible in a vacuum. Sound is a wave. We can’t see it, but we feel it in the in the delicate structures within the ear. That shows that the receiver is an important factor in these energy waves.”

  They turned as Abigail entered the room bearing a tray. “Would you like me to pour, sir?” she asked in her Irish accent.

  “No. Get out!” barked Bartholemew, as Nat slammed him with an irritated glare.

  Abigail didn’t flinch. “As you please, sir.”

  She turned and left the room without turning a hair as Nat visualized her reaction if he had spoken to her like that.

 
Nat arched a brow. “That was a bit rough, wasn’t it? Did she do something wrong before I arrived?”

  “I can’t abide ugly women. They’re an affront to nature. They have little enough use in the world as it is, without being grotesque, as well.”

  “Why did you employ her if you feel that way?”

  “I didn’t. She’s a fill-in. The regular maid’s sick. It’s not forever, and she’s competent, so I’ll tolerate it for the time being.”

  Nat masked his reactions to the abrupt changes in persona taking place in front of him. “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Just cream. So, what does all this equipment do?” Nat asked as he cast glittering eyes across the workbench, mentally storing away the man’s comments to analyze later.

  “Don’t touch the lid. That’s a Leyden jar. A capacitor. We need those to store electric charge. Interestingly, it was Benjamin Franklin who demonstrated that the charge is stored on the glass. Up until then, it had been assumed that the charge had been stored in the water.”

  “What would happen if I touched the lid?”

  “You’d get a shock, not a big one, but it would give you a jolt,” answered Bartholemew. “Don’t have one in the house big enough to do more than that.”

  “Why do you need that?”

  “I believe that electromagnetic waves can be generated by the discharge of a capacitor. Revolutionary, I know, but I’m currently working on a way to detect the waves.”

  “A kind of receiver?”

  “You’ve got it, Mr. Roberts. I knew you were a smart man. I can identify a fast mind. I’m so pleased we met.”

  Nat wandered up and down the bench, drinking in the equipment as he sipped his coffee. “Is any of this dangerous? That jar. Could it kill me?”

  Bartholemew’s dismissive laugh rang around the room. “Not one like this. They’ve been making Leyden jars for centuries. It’s just an unpleasant jolt. They store electricity as an electrical field and discharge when a circuit is restored. Batteries need a chemical reaction and take longer to discharge. You can get a slight shock from them, too, but they won’t harm you.”