The professor chuckled. "You call it trickery, but I prefer to call it a mystery. One which I am working to solve!"
"But… metal does not move of its own accord!"
"A mystery indeed. Now, will you take a seat?"
I swallowed, because my hour of reckoning had arrived. The strange properties of the metal disc had taken my mind off more important matters, however briefly, but now there was no avoiding them. Slowly, unwillingly, I took the nearest chair, perching on the very edge as though I might flee at any second.
Meanwhile, the professor removed his spectacles and sat behind the desk, facing me across the broad surface. "I will pay two hundred a year, less ten shillings a week board and rent. Of course, you may wish to live elsewhere, in which case the board and rent will not apply."
Caught off-guard as I was, my mouth opened and closed in the manner of a fish.
"Surely you did not expect more?" the professor asked me gently. "Why, a lowly recruit in the armed forces earns only—"
"Sir, I accept the position," I said quickly. My wits had been scrambled by the unexpected turn of events, but they were not that scrambled. Two hundred per year! With that amount, my troubles were over, and I'd have enough to send a monthly stipend to my parents, easing their own situation. I felt a surge of relief so strong, so powerful, that I was completely unable to speak. Here I'd sat, thinking the professor was to chastise me, when instead I'd landed the position. Frankly, I couldn't believe it, and I wanted to leap around the study, shaking the very rafters with my joy. Then the reality of my situation hit me, staining my joy like a bucket of slops across a line of clean washing.
I had applied for the position under false pretences. I was not the man the professor thought me to be. I was a fraud.
The two hundred a year vanished with a pop. The money I'd send to my parents… gone. My new lodgings and those three square meals a day were cruelly snatched from my grasp. I had to own up, whatever the cost. "There is one small detail I should mention, professor," I said, all the while thinking of three very large details.
"Oh?"
"I don't match the requirements in your advertisement. Not entirely, that is." I was still dancing around the matter, for I hoped to introduce each of my failings one after the other, in an attempt to soften each blow.
The professor gestured impatiently. "Those requirements were of little consequence."
"They were?"
"Of course. You're the man for this job, Jones. I knew it the moment I saw you."
I thought back to the clouds of smoke and the professor's cries of anger as the housekeeper interrupted his work. The professor hadn't even looked upon me until he'd turned to face me with those peculiar spectacles. Either he was revising the facts to suit the outcome, which made him a very poor scientific man indeed, or he genuinely believed in the memories he'd just fabricated, in which case he was deluded. Neither spoke well of my new employer, but then I thought of the two hundred a year, and I decided I could live with his little foibles.
In any case, with no other prospects I had no choice in the matter. One way or another, my future was bound up with this eccentric little man.
Chapter 3
I was about to ask what my duties might be, and whether the professor wanted me to get started immediately, when there was a sound of approaching footsteps from the hall outside. It was a heavy tread, which discounted Mrs Fairacre, and I wondered whether one of the other applicants had come to plead their case.
Instead, the door opened and a young woman strode in without having paused to knock. "Father, have you… oh!"
The newcomer was around my age, with long dark hair tied up in a rough bun, in the way of a washerwoman or a market stall-holder, and she was wearing a set of bib overalls covered in soot or a similar fine black powder. Heavy work boots completed her outfit, and I would have taken her for a chimney sweep had it not been for the way she addressed the professor. Then I studied her face, and in that instant it was as though the mirror atop the great lighthouse of Alexandria was reflecting sunlight directly into my unshielded eyes.
I do not speak of radiant beauty or other such romantic frippery, but rather the sheer life force and strength of character apparent within the person standing before me. This was a woman who stood for no nonsense, and her clear, intelligent eyes would miss no detail, however small.
Then she gave me a warm smile and held out a slender hand. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr Hartlow. I'm Roberta Twickham."
So taken was I by the radiant smile that I had already extended my own hand before I became aware of her error. "Ah, er, it's Mr Jones, actually. Mr Septimus Jones, at your service."
Roberta withdrew her hand. "Father," she said, with an edge to her voice. "Tell me you did not hire the wrong bookkeeper."
There was no reply, and I turned to see an extraordinary sight. The professor had risen from his desk and was rubbing his hands together nervously, all the while exhibiting a ghastly smile. "Well, ahem, you see—" he began.
"Father!"
"Yes dear?"
"I told you which applicant was the most suitable. I wrote his name down for you, lest you forgot. Master Jules Hartlow of the Stuanton Hartlows."
"I interviewed that young man, Roberta. He was most unsuitable."
"Who cares a fig for suitability?" snapped Roberta. "His family is worth five thousand a year, and their introductions alone would have paid his wages of one hundred a year twice over. Do you not recall our conversation?"
"I do seem to recall
