Henson poured a cup of coffee, absently blowing across its dark surface. He wandered back to then, the harpoon triggering a fond memory of being on hunts with his Eskimo crew— men who became close in the unforgiving icy plains of northern Greenland. Those times had a powerful hold on him. Those times, and the son he’d left behind. He finished his coffee and, after washing up a few plates in the sink, tidied up his apartment. Checking the time, got dressed and headed out to keep his appointment with Nikola Tesla.
“Edna, how goes it?’ he said to his neighbor coming out of her apartment across the hall in her work clothes, a blue serge skirt and coat.
Edna Mullins worked in the chief clerk’s office at the U.S. Customs House downtown. A good, solid, government job she might retire from on a modest pension.
“Oh fine, just fine,” she said.
They descended the stairs together chitchatting.
“Don’t work too hard,” Henson said to her when they reached the street.
“Never as hard as you, Matt,” she said, heading in the opposite direction.
Outside the tan car wasn’t there and Henson detected no tail on him as he walked along. Nonetheless, he took a circuitous route to his destination.
The Service Hotel still had its previous name—the Earlington—inscribed in stone in a semi-circle of lettering etched over the front entrance. The Service moniker had been acquired during World War I when the hotel, which had fallen out of the hands of its previous owner, had been taken over for the recuperation of physically and psychologically wounded doughboys returning from the fight. It held some 200 rooms, some of them rentals by the week, and others converted apartments.
“Yes, Doctor Tesla is expecting you,” said a sharp-eyed woman behind the front desk when Henson entered the lobby and told her who he was. “He’s in the Tower Room at the top.”
Up Henson rode in a quiet elevator and was let out in a gloomy chamber with a door across the small span of black and white tile floor. He opened it, and a sizzling bolt of lightning boiled the air in front of him. Instinctively, he ducked, reaching for the throwing star strapped to his shin under his pant leg. He also had another star tucked inside his waistband.
“Sorry, I thought I’d checked all the connections,” a man wi5th a pug nose in a lab coat. A wary Henson rose, empty handed.
“Stanley, who don’t you and Jean see to all the connections, please?”
“Yes, Doctor,” replied the pug-nosed assistant.
“One minute my good man,” the Doctor said to Henson. He and Stanley got busy at a fantastic-looking machine like something of off the cover of Amazing Stories magazine.
They were joined by a female assistant also dressed similarly to Stanley. She wore glasses, and her hair was pulled pack in a tight bun. The device was made of metal, about five feet long and two feet in diameter. It was cylindrical in shape with glass tubes and wires protruding at numerous intervals. The thing rested on a tripod and there was wiring leading to a large box he figured was a battery. There were several squat black metal boxes with gauges on them connected to this as well. Finally, the Doctor disengaged from his tinkering and walked over to the explorer.
“Harlem’s own Mr. Henson.”
“Doctor Tesla,” he said, shaking the offered hand. “You looking to fry one of your neighbors?” Henson asked, only half joking.
“If one of them was Edison, yes,” Tesla replied solemn-faced.
The scientist-inventor was about medium height, with a heavy black mustache and eyes deep-set in an angular face. His white hair was cut as if by a near-sighted barber. The Serbian accent was pronounced, but his English was crisp and distinct. He wore cuffed pants and a shirt that seemed too big on his lean frame. The sleeves were rolled up past his elbows and there was sinewy muscle in those seventy-two year-old arms.
“But no,” he continued, “I need to make many further adjustments to the Electro-Pulsar. It still has much more work and experimentation to go through to perfect the shocker beam. Essentially make it wield a coherent beam of electricity.”
“Like a canon, only it shoots lightning bolts?”
Tesla said, “Exactly. As our penchant for making war and untold death on our brethren is inevitable, what if each country possessed the means to destroy the other? Would that not be a stalemate to such hostilities?”
“You might have more faith in humankind than has been demonstrated, Doctor Tesla.”
“Nikola, if I can call you Matt.”
“Nikola it is.”
“You may be right, but we shall see. But, come, let’s have our tea and biscuits as we discuss the matter at hand.”
Set in the center of the roof was an enclosed eight-sided structure that once must have been the penthouse suite Henson surmised. But as they walked around a corner of this, he could see through the windows it had been converted from living space to Tesla’s lab. There were numerous gadgets in various stages of either being built or torn down. Wires, black and grey boxes with tubes and gauges, Tesla coils of various sizes, gears, switches, and an assortment of all sorts of electrical and mechanical apparatuses were also in there on tables and work benches. On top of this was a radio tower of advanced design.
The two sat at a round glass table. On it was a teapot and European clear glasses set in silver holders. There was also a plate piled with rectangular British tea biscuits, and a pot of jam with a butter knife laying nearby. They sat, and after suspending a cube of sugar over each glass by a toothpick, Tesla poured their tea
