“Magerzart, eh?” I said. “Tell me about her.”
Hatherley blushed. “Well, she was German, like her father. I don’t know if I mentioned it, but Colonel Stark spoke with an accent.”
“You didn’t,” I said. “And yet, why not? Suits him, really. Did he also happen to have a long black moustache he could twist through his fingers as he stared at you nefariously?”
“No, no, no,” Hatherley scoffed. “It was brown. Ah, but what should I tell you about Magerzart…? She just had this look in her eye… Care? Concern? Maybe a bit of guilt? She had the most striking eyes; they just popped right out at you, you know?”
“Because she was so emaciated?”
“Right. And her hair… She had this long blonde hair. I remember thinking how sad it was that it was falling out in chunks.”
“Malnutrition?”
“Yeah…” he sighed. “Well Stark and Ferguson went off to get the machine ready. They said something about how long it took to load up hundreds of empty bottles. Stark said his daughter would be happy to guard me. But then he said he thought he’d got the English wrong and asked me what the right word was. I said ‘entertain’ and he said yes, that must be right. So, there I was. Alone with her.”
“With her eyes bulging out all over the place, and hair wisping off like autumn leaves?”
“Ah, Magerzart… I had no idea what to say. I told her my name was Victor Hatherley and she told me she already knew that. So then I started telling her about hydraulic engineering, but she had no interest in it.”
“Nobody does,” I noted.
“So then I just started telling her what it was like to live alone. At first she had no interest in that, either. But then I mentioned it was kind of sad to take all my meals by myself.”
“Ah!” I said, failing to hold back a bit of a laugh. “I bet that got her interest!”
“Oh yes,” Hatherley agreed. “She wanted to know what it was like to live in a house with food in all the cupboards, just knowing you could have some whenever you pleased. And someone must have told her about crumpets once, for she wanted to know if they were as good as everybody said. And I said they were pretty good, actually, and then I asked her to marry me.”
“Wait! What?”
Hatherley threw up his free hand in exasperation and cried, “Well, I told you I had no idea how courting works! What was I supposed to do? There we both were, you know, facing lonely lives, trapped in our little worlds and… I don’t know… it just seemed like a chance for us both to break out!”
“Mr. Hatherley, there are a thousand steps a young lady expects between meeting a gentleman and being proposed to.”
“I know that! But I don’t know what those steps really are. And I realized I had this one small chance. So I took it.”
“She rejected you, I suppose?”
“Er… she didn’t say yes,” he confirmed. “I do think I surprised her a bit. She said she was a stranger to such things, too, as the young men she met never stayed long. I told her that sitting about doing nothing was a bit of a specialty of mine, so I wasn’t going to go away any time soon. She said she thought I probably was. Then I think we both felt bad and we sat there in silence a while. But then—and oh, it gave my heart such hope—she leaned in and asked if she should wed me, might she try a crumpet. I laughed and told her we could have crumpets every day! The look she gave me was just…”
Victor Hatherley trailed off, lost for words, so I suggested, “Hungry?”
“Yes! That’s it! Hungry! But then her father returned and said they were ready for me to see to the machine. So I picked up my tools and went to see the juice press.”
I gave a knowing nod. “Rather large, was it?”
“Really large! The whole room, in fact. The ceiling and floor are steel and sort of crossed with small, triangular nodules that look like they’re made to interlock.”
“Like the head of a meat tenderizer?” I asked.
“Very like that, yes. We went in one door, through the press room, and out a door on the other side to the machinery. They ran it for me, and I instantly detected the problem: one of the India rubber seals had burst and the resulting leakage robbed the machine of all force. Luckily, it was a standard size, so I had one with me and quickly replaced it. Oh, they were so happy. Mr. Ferguson kept jumping up and down, clapping his little hands and shouting, ‘Juice! Juice! Juice!’ Colonel Stark said I had certainly earned my fee, then he picked up my toolbox, opened the door to the press room, and gestured me inside. I thought he meant to follow me through, but a moment later I heard the door swing shut! I heard the clicking of the lock! I heard the machine come to life! Slowly, the ceiling began to press down towards me! By God! And over it all, the muffled cries of Ferguson: ‘Juice! Juice! Juice!’ I threw myself at first one door then the other, crying for mercy, trying to force my way through, but they were locked!”
“How did you escape?” I asked.
“Well, just as I’d given up hope—just as I’d begun to wonder if I should try to stand up to make it quicker, or lie face up, or face down, or what would be least painful—I heard the lock click at the other door. It creaked open, and I heard Magerzart’s voice say, ‘I don’t want you to die.’”
“That must have made you happy.”
“Oh! For two reasons!
