Ghosts by Gaslight - Jack Dann [21]
“Give it to me,” Vordran said. All but snatching the stethoscope from Scheuch’s hands, he clamped the earpieces on his head, which being larger than Scheuch’s, required angry, hurried readjustment. Angelos kept the generator turning steadily—the galvanometer needle hardly stirred from its near-center point—and Vordran listened with his jaw sagging and his eyes utterly unfocused. Abruptly he tore the stethoscope from his head and hurled it back at Angelos, shouting, “It is a trick, it has to be! This has nothing to do with your electricity, not a thing!” Yet the sound of his words was not so much angry, Scheuch thought, as somehow bereft.
Angelos stopped the generator for a second time. He said softly, “I wish it were a trick. Oh, you don’t know how much I wish it were.” The three others stared at him. Angelos said, “What did you hear?”
Vordran shook his head. “Not important. What is important is how you made me hear it. The rest of this”—he waved a dismissive, if slightly trembling hand—“is nonsense. Tricks, like those American spiritualists. Table-rapping. Fraudulent, my good sir!” But his eyes were, astonishingly, bright with tears.
Angelos was a long time responding; or at least it seemed so to Scheuch. When he finally spoke, his rigidly calm voice twanged in a way that Scheuch could not recall ever hearing from him. He said, “Whatever it is, Vordran, it’s not fraudulent. I think I wish it were.”
He glanced around the room at them all, his eyes squirrel-quick, squirrel-anxious, never quite meeting anyone else’s eyes fully. “You’re right about one thing. I did start out rather larking about with wireless telegraphy, just out of curiosity, wanting to see if an ordinary chap like me could do it. It’s been pretty well established since the Maxwell equations that electromagnetism travels in waves, and I started by seeing whether I could tap into those waves some way and use them to conduct voices, actual human voices, you know. No experience, no training, no proper equipment—and, of course, no laboratory assistants, except for good old Scheuch there.” He patted Scheuch’s arm, adding, “Eternally obliged, old man.”
“Don’t mention it,” Scheuch mumbled. “Glad to be of service.” Then, louder, “But if you aren’t making them, those voices—”
“Tricks,” Vordran said again, louder than before.
“—and if they aren’t here, some way, in your rooms—”
“They aren’t—” Angelos started to reply, but he caught himself noticeably, and Scheuch pressed on.
“Then, as Griffith just asked, are they speaking through your generator, through your stethoscope, or . . . or what? Whose voices are they? Where are they coming from? And stop saying you don’t know—you must have some notion!” He turned to Vordran on his right, then to Griffith. “I think I speak for all of us when I say we’re not leaving until you tell us a bit more.”
Vordran nodded. Griffith said grimly, “Quite a bit more.” He coughed, longer than he needed to, and then asked, “What about—ah—ghosts? We had a ghost up at Balliol. Old scout, don’t you know—spent his whole life cleaning after students, didn’t have anywhere else to go after he died. Quite true. Saw him myself.”
Angelos did not answer. He began disassembling the generator and its attachments, putting the copper disc carefully back in its linen pocket, folding the stethoscope away. Scheuch put a hand on his wrist. “That can wait, don’t you think, Angelos? Talk to us.”
Angelos clasped his hands together behind his back, rocking slightly from foot to foot as he spoke. “All I can tell you with any degree of certainty is that they are real voices of real persons. That I do believe, however absurd it may seem to anyone else. I also suspect—I’m not sure of this, mind you—that they are somehow being carried to us on electromagnetic radio waves, as Maxwell calls them.” He wet his dry lips, took a long, slow breath. “But what I have also come to believe”—a very small chuckle, nearly inaudible—“which might very well get me stuck away in Northampton, is that all voices, every word ever spoken or sung or