When the Walls Fell (24 page)

“It’s amazing,” he whispered. “Do you want to see it?”

From any other man that would have been a painful come-on, a bit like “come see my etchings”, wink-wink. She giggled again, this was probably exactly the time when men actually did use that line.

Teddy giggled along with her.

She thought about begging off, but maybe a distraction would do her good. She wasn’t getting anywhere as it was. She just kept going over the same ground and each pass left her with a bigger ball of angst in her stomach and no answers. “I’d love to see your secret.”

Teddy’s entire body seemed to smile. She slipped her arm through his and he stared at it before standing a little taller and escorting her down the street.

The Fiske house rivaled the Graham’s. It was large and imposing and everything Teddy wasn’t. The door opened even before they reached it. She wondered for a moment if it was triggered automatically but then she saw a little old butler try to push it closed. The man wasn’t just old; he was “there’s probably a picture of Moses in his high school yearbook” old. He creaked along and Teddy stepped forward to help him close the front door. Once it was secure, he helped the old man shuffle over to a large plush chair that sat oddly in the middle of the hallway.

“Do you need anything, Donald?” Teddy yelled.

The man frowned, held up an ear trumpet and Teddy yelled the question again. Donald shook his head and Teddy patted his shoulder before turning back to Elizabeth. “Down here.”

He led her down the hall and into the library. It was the kind of room Elizabeth had always dreamt of. Books covered the walls from floor to high ceiling. There was even an upper level complete with a walkway and railing that circled the perimeter of the room. A ridiculously large rich, ornate Oriental rug covered the floor and huge squishy dark leather chairs sat under large streetlamp-like lights in the corners.

“This,” she said, “is heaven on Earth. If Simon saw this he would have had serious book-envy.”

“Over here,” he said resting his hand on the gilded edges of a book called
Memoirs of the Twentieth Century
. He flattened his hand along the spine and pushed. The entire wall swiveled. Teddy reached inside the opening and turned a wall switch. A weak overhead light struggled to life and illuminated the secret passage behind.

“You are full of surprises,” Elizabeth said as she followed him down the dim corridor.

At the end of the short hallway, there was another door. This one was thick steel, like a vault door with two large locks and a combination tumbler. Teddy dug a key ring from his pocket and undid the locks and spun the dial of the tumbler. He put his hand on the door handle and then turned back to Elizabeth. “This is our secret now. And you can’t tell anyone.”

She promised.

He pulled the door open and added, “They wouldn’t understand.”

She didn’t like the sound of that, but she followed him through the passage and down a rickety winding staircase into the dark room below. The light from the hall faded behind them and she had to grip the railing to keep her footing. Wherever they were going it was big. She could hear the way their footsteps echoed into the chamber.

“Can you turn on a light?” she asked.

“Right,” he said and then she heard metal scraping against metal and a loud pop. An electrical hum built in intensity and then large overhead lights sparked to life.

She blinked to adjust to the sudden brightness and stood gaping at what she saw. The room was big, but it wasn’t the size that stunned her. It was the four giant Tesla coils and circular metal cage. It was the racks of equipment with dials and gages. It was the tables full of Bunsen burners and beakers and bubbling liquids.

Teddy was a mad scientist.

Chapter Twenty-One

E
lizabeth stepped uncertainly into the giant room. She knew Teddy was quirky, but this way, way beyond quirky. This was “on the government watch-list” quirky.

“What is all this?” she asked.

“My experiments,” he said, puffing out his chest. He ushered her over to a table covered with blueprints, drawings and schematics and dug through a stack of graphs and maps.

Teddy mumbled to himself and finally pulled out a copper-colored ball from beneath the stack of papers. It was about the size of a baseball. “Eureka! Archimedes said that. Did you know that Archimedes claimed he could lift the earth if he had something to stand on? I’d like to see that. Wouldn’t you like to see that?”

“Yes, that would be something to see.” Elizabeth said and then gestured to the ball in his hands. “What is that?”

Teddy cocked his head to the side. “A ball.”

“I mean what does it do?”

He smiled. “You’ll see.”

Elizabeth was all for adventure, but judging from the bookcase along one wall whose shelves were filled with things she couldn’t identify floating in formaldehyde, maybe a little caution wouldn’t be a bad thing. The scorch marks on the opposite wall weren’t exactly comforting either.

“Over here,” Teddy said.

She joined him by a large bank of dials and switches.

“Are those really Tesla coils?” she asked. She’d seen pictures of them in books, but never in person. These were about 15 feet high with metal cages around the base and a large sort of flying saucer thing on top.

“Of a sort. I…I redesigned them. His could create power, but they didn’t harness it in the same way these do. It…it focuses,” he said wiggling his hands in the air. “Concentrated and the electromagnetic field is more stable. Usually.”

“Usually?”

He handed her the copper colored ball and added, “It might get a little loud.”

He pulled on a series of levers and switches and one by one the giant coils came to life. Each large metal tower began to spark in turn. Tendrils of electricity arced out from the big metal donut at the top of the tower and out into space like bright blue snakes. It was all oddly familiar. Each tower’s electrical arc connected with the next until there was a canopy of crackling blue energy above them.

“This way,” Teddy yelled.

He led Elizabeth over to the large metal cage that sat in the middle of the room. As the electrical storm raged above them, an occasional loud crack made Elizabeth cringe and duck.

“Is this safe?” she yelled.

He nodded. “It’s been over a week since anything exploded.”

Elizabeth forced a smile. “Good.”

He climbed two steps up to the large metal cage and opened the door. The cage itself was big enough for three or four people to stand comfortably inside and had a console with a complex instrument panel. He waved for her to follow him inside.

It was madness. Teddy, who helped her up the steps, was clearly mad. She knew as she closed the gate behind her that she had to be mad for even considering it. And Simon would be an entirely different kind of mad when he found out what she’d done.

“Ready?” Teddy asked as he adjusted a few dials.

“For what?”

“My secret,” he said as he dropped the copper-colored ball into a hollow cylinder in the control panel.

He held out his hand to her. “Hold on tight.”

The humming and crackling grew louder and louder. The electric arcs reached toward them and surrounded the cage. Holding on tight would not be a problem.

A frighteningly familiar sensation took root in the pit of her stomach. She looked at Teddy in surprise. Only one thing felt like that. She knew what would come next—the incredibly disconcerting feeling of complete paralysis and then the world would shake itself apart around them. And it did.

When Elizabeth came back to herself she was standing outside. She could feel the sun on her face and hear a crowd and a…band? It took a moment to clear her head and when she did she knew exactly where and, more importantly, when she was.

The crowd gathered at the base of the stage in front of the Ferry Building and sang along with a brass band as it played “Bill Bailey”. She looked to the side of the stage and saw Max meeting Teddy and shaking his hand. And then she saw herself. They’d traveled back in time.

Teddy was the watchmaker.

The Teddy next to her started to hum. “I like this song.”

“How did you?” Elizabeth stammered, trying to break away from the incredibly odd sensation of watching herself. And it wasn’t just that that muddled her brain. This meant that not only was Teddy linked to the Council, he’d somehow managed to break one of their cardinal rules. No time travel within your own lifetime. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

“Anything’s possible,” Teddy said as he hummed along. “Why do you think he doesn’t want to come home?”

“Who?”

“Bill Bailey.”

She was about to ask another question when the familiar feeling started in her stomach again.

“Oh, here we go,” Teddy said tightening his grip on her hand. “Automatic return.”

They reappeared inside the metal cage. The sudden shift from the relative quiet of Market Street to the cacophony inside Teddy’s lab made Elizabeth flinch. Teddy held on tightly to her hand and flipped a few switches. The copper ball popped out and slowly the coils began to shut down. Her stomach roiled and her head had already started to throb.

Once the arcs had stopped he let go of her. “Did you like it?”

Her mind was reeling. Was Teddy the start of the Council? Was she the start of it? “This is big,” Elizabeth said to herself. Even through her fuzzy brain she knew something incredibly important had just happened.

“I’m trying to make it smaller.”

“I didn’t mean—”

Teddy opened the cage door and they stepped out. “Maybe something you can carry.”

“Like a watch?” Elizabeth said absently.

Teddy’s eyes lit up. “Yes. A watch! I like that.”

Oh, boy. She really had to be more carful. “Does anyone know about this?”

“Just you. It’s our secret, remember?”

“And it’s one hell of a secret, Teddy.”

***

Elizabeth was wearing a hole in Mrs. Eldridge’s very fine Persian rug when Simon returned from his fact-finding mission.

“Didn’t learn much about our Madame Petrovka,” he said, “but we did discover some interesting things about that man Stryker.”

“You don’t know from interesting,” Elizabeth said under her breath. After seeing Simon’s frown, she added, “I found something out myself. You go first.”

“We took a chance and enquired about Stryker and it seems he has a rather colorful past. He was arrested several times for petty theft and other minor infractions and then sometime in his twenties he grew increasingly violent until he murdered a man. In 1882 he was admitted to Bethlam Royal Hospital, more commonly known as Bedlam.”

“The insane asylum?”

“Yes. And despite being a murderer, and having committed multiple heinous acts during his stay in the hospital, he was released. A mysterious and quite wealthy patron apparently secured it.”

“Paid for it?”

“Yes.”

“I think we’re safe to assume Madame Petrovka was his mysterious benefactor.”

“But why would she do it?” Elizabeth asked. “How would she even know about a man like that?”

“Perhaps they knew each other before. Her past is still a mystery. I’d venture to say though that their paths crossed far before his release.” Simon sat down on the sofa and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “We’ve got enquiries out about that. But, I don’t know if they’ll find anything in time.”

Right. Time. In just under 48 hours, San Francisco would fall apart. Literally. Would Teddy’s underground laboratory survive? Would Teddy? Mrs. Eldridge? Would anyone she’d met?