Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [17]
“We had a fellow like that up at Balliol,” Griffith reflected. “Rum cove from the first. Other chaps kept bullpups, ratters—he kept a monkey, called it his associate. Never could find a roommate because of that beast. Always experimenting, night and day—chemistry, I suppose, from the smell, or maybe that was the monkey. Killed in the war, poor chap. Him, not the monkey. Can’t say what became of the monkey.”
“Different sort, Angelos,” Scheuch replied. “Not defending him or anything, just saying he’s not exactly round the bend. Eccentric, absolutely, but not . . . I don’t know—not potty, not like that. Eccentric.”
Griffith, his interest lost well before Scheuch had finished speaking, raised an eyebrow himself and said, “Jew.”
That winter was a hard one, even for London. The Russell Square rooming house, like most such, lacked any form of central heating, and all four men suffered to one degree or another from colds and chilblains. The world-famous London fog, which was not a proper fog at all, settled over the city, leaving a coal-oil film over everything; the Thames froze over, and a few starving wolves invaded from the countryside, as none had been known to do since prewar days. The men trudged to their various occupations through the dirty snow, or—in Vordran’s case—waited with hats pulled tightly down for one of the new streetcars, which might, in postwar London, be steam- or battery-driven on one day, then pulled by teams of men or horses the next. Simpson’s suffered a notable falling-off in custom, enough that Griffith was on involuntary furlough an extra day out of the week; while the bank where Scheuch was employed frequently went whole days without a single client coming in from the street. The city closed down, as though under a filthy potlid; and—with the same legendary stoicism through which they had endured the Turkish siege—Londoners simply waited for the winter to end.
But in Russell Square, Angelos remained the single cheerful soul. (“Well he might be,” Griffith sneered, “as many frozen paupers as he and his grisly crew must be slicing up these days.”) The young man still worked a full day at Christ’s Hospital, then made his way home to spend half the night making odd, frequently disquieting noises with his homebuilt machines for which Scheuch had no names. Most often he slouched into Scheuch’s rooms to slap down a scribbled-over clutch of foolscap, grumbling, “Bloody Faraday, bloody Hughes, bloody diamagnetism, makes no bloody sense!” and appealing for assistance with a new batch of equations. “If you could just cast an eye over these, I swear I’ll not trouble you again. Bloody Faraday!”
Scheuch aided as best a country day school education and a certain natural bent for mathematics allowed him to do, thus becoming the closest thing Angelos possessed to a colleague, without in the least comprehending exactly what the other could possibly be driving toward. As he commented warily to Vordran, “It’s a good bit like playing blindman’s buff, where your eyes are covered and you’re spun around until you can’t tell where you’re facing, or which way anything is. I don’t know what on earth the man has in mind.”
Much to his surprise, the older man answered him slowly and thoughtfully, saying, “Well, many of the people he quotes to you share an interest in wireless communication. Who knows—he may yet have you talking to people in Africa or China, this time next year. If you know anyone there, that is to say,” and he made the little half-hiccough sound that qualified as a chuckle with Vordran.
Scheuch gave a weary shrug, spreading his hands, as he found himself doing more and more when asked about Angelos’s behavior. “That could be what he’s after, for all of me—as much time as I’ve spent with the fellow, I confess I haven’t the least idea.” Turning